Photo Realistic Drop Shadows in Photoshop

Step 6: Duplicate The Channel As A New Document

We're applied our Gaussian Blur filter to the channel to smooth everything out, and we've boosted the contrast with Levels. Our channel is ready to be used as a displacement map, but in order to use a displacement map, it has to be a separate file, and currently it's just a channel in our original file. We're going to save it as a new file though by duplicating the channel. Click on the small right-pointing arrow in the top right corner of the Channels palette to access the Channels palette options, and select Duplicate Channel from the drop-down list that appears:

Photoshop tutorial: Click the small right-pointing arrow in the top right of the Channels palette and select "Duplicate Channel" from the options list.

This brings up the Duplicate Channel dialog box:

For Destination, click on the down-pointing arrow and select New to duplicate the channel as a completely separate document, and give your new document a name. I've named mine "water-displace". Click OK when you're done and your channel will appear as a new Photoshop document on your screen.

Step 7: Save The New Document

Save this new document to your desktop or wherever you'd like to save it on your computer, and remember where you're saving it to because we'll be accessing it in just a moment. Once you've saved the document, go ahead and close out of it, leaving only your original document open.

Step 8: Create A New Layer From The Drop Shadow Layer Style

Normally layer styles such as drop shadows are simply effects applied to other layers, but we can convert layer styles into their own layers, which is exactly what we need to do with our drop shadow effect in order to be able to use it with our displacement map. With the type layer selected, go up to the Layer menu at the top of the screen, select Layer Style, and then way down near the bottom of the list, select Create Layer:

When you select "Create Layer" from the Layer Style options, Photoshop takes the drop shadow, rasterizes it (converts it into pixels), and then places it on its own separate layer directly below the type layer:

We have our displacement map and we have our drop shadow on its own layer. We're ready to combine the two and create a much more realistic-looking shadow effect, and we'll do that next.