The drop
shadow is a fact of design, and ALAP's ShadowCaster for Adobe
InDesign is here to address this reality. Like its elder sibling,
ALAP ShadowCaster XT for QuarkXPress, ShadowCaster for InDesign
is a plugin that allows the user to select an object in a layout
and generate a shadow based on that object. The shadow is generated
automatically as a TIFF file.
The
features
The ShadowCaster plugin creates a new palette in InDesign for
control over the creation and manipulation of shadows. It includes
three tabs, one for creating the shadow, one for handling burns
and one for providing information about the shadow file.
The ShadowCaster
palette as it appears in InDesign on the Mac.
In the Create
Shadow tab (pictured above), you're presented with several pull-down
menus and data entry fields for control over the appearance
of the shadow. These include three preset styles—Ghosted,
Silhouette and Outline. You can set the resolution of the shadow
from 72 DPI to 400 DPI and the blur radius up to 250 pixels.
You can also manually offset the horizontal and vertical position
of the shadow and set its color to anything currently in you
InDesign color palette.
A Ghosted
shadow created in ShadowCaster.
Shadows behave like any other graphic in
InDesign and can be moved independent
of the original image or text.
Once you've
created a shadow you like, you can save it as a Style for future
use.
