Project 20: Adding Shadows

For this exercise, I used a photo I'd taken back in the summer:

It wasn't a particularly useful photo in its original form, as the background was too cluttered.

I isolated the object, and as described in the course materials, I made two layers on top of a white background layer. I used the magic wand tool to select the white background of the top layer, then removed the selected area so that it was transparent. I then chose 'reselect' and inverted the selection so that just the ice cream was selected. I filled the ice cream on the second layer with black, and used the Transform → Distort command to change the shape of the selection:

I then reduced the opacity of the shadow layer and used gaussian blur with a radius of nine pixels. Here is the result:

 It's not too bad for a first attempt, but it looks a little basic, and definitely not photo-realistic. I thought that perhaps using the technique learned a while back for creating gradients would help, so I created a new layer and added a white / transparent gradient. I placed this over the shadow so that the end appeared lighter and more diffuse, and added a gradient to the background layer:

There's a bit of a 'halo' around the top of the ice cream, which indicates that perhaps I could have done a better job on the isolation! I'm still not feeling happy with the shadow either. Perhaps I chose an awkward object, or perhaps I just need more practice. Not too bad for a first attempt though, I suppose!