Drop Shadow on all 4 sides

Hi,

I have some stills imposed over a blurred background clip and I want to give them a dropped shadow, but have the shadow on all 4 sides, not just the 2 sides. (In some cases this gives the image a bit more of a "lift" effect.)

I've tinkered with the Viewer's drop shadow command with angles and offset etc. but no luck. I've tried creating a matte or rectangle with soft edges or other filters and no luck -- at last not that I can figure out, with limited matte and mask experience.

I know I could create a 4-sided shadow layer for the image in Photoshop, but I'm just wondering if there's a way to do it in FCP for that extra bit of control.

Thanks for any advice ...

Paul C.

You can create drop shadows in Final Cut?! Holy cow.

This is something I would definitely do in After Effects.

You could try an extra layer between your stills and the background. Use the shape generator, which you can find in the effects tab, or in the dropdown in the viewer. Make an appropriate shape, and soften it. Then use the opacity control to set the darkness to suit.

If your stills are moving you will have to move the box as well. You can nest the still and box, or possibly copy the move from this still using paste attributes.

But, as Jeff points out, you may find that After Effects or Motion offer you more control for this sort of thing.

-Vance

really, what youre talking about is more of a "cast shadow" i dont think FCP has that. but there are likely 3rd party plugins to address it.

personally, id do this with a combo of photoshop and aftereffects

you might also look into an outer glow filter and just make the glow a dark color instead of light

and if you'd just copied the clips and put it atop of each other and each one getting a different drop shadow angle?