Photo 11

Sue Leith

Product / pendant Exercise

1. Open Pendant Image. Then create a new (different) document - Go to File > New and make your document -5 inches x 7 high at 72 resolution with white background (color mode =RGB).

2. Select the Gradient Tool from the Toolbox – make sure your foreground color is black & your background color is white. Choose the third gradient from the pop out menu on the Options Bar for a black to white gradient.

3. Starting about ¼ to ½ way down from the top of page, drag down to the bottom of the page to create a gradient. The full page should be a gradient from black at the top to white at the bottom.

4. Select the Elliptical Marquee Tool from the Toolbox.

5. Draw a large elliptical shape, starting just above the middle of the page and going just below the bottom of the page. Center the ellipse, if necessary, by dragging with your mouse inside the shape. Make sure it is still selected (marching ants still visible), and go to Edit > Fill and fill with White. Deselect.

6. You should have just one layer at this point. Now blur the entire layer using Gaussian Blur and enter a large number of pixels, until you like the way it looks.

7. Select the Move Tool and drag the pendant from the original document (Pendant Begin) into the new document you created. Name your new layer pendant and close the Pendant Begin document.

8. Click on the effects icon - the circle with the f inside it at the bottom of the layers palette (far left icon) and select Drop Shadow from the pop up box. In the middle of this dialogue box, play with the Distance, Size and Spread to make the shadow the way you want it. Finally, lower the opacity slider to make the shadow subtle and to soften the effect, and click OK.

You can use this technique for your product category, if you play with it, change it and make it your own.