So why shadows?

1) gives the graphic some depth.
2) REALISM
3) you look less nooby

These are three main reasons why you should be using shadows in your graphics. You can shadow literally anything IF YOU BELIEVE, people, things, text, etc. There are couple of ways of adding shadows; these techniques are very basic and will be covered through many programs (but photoshop can automatically add drop shadows; what a loser)

For this tutorial, we shall be using a shirtless Kai PURELY FOR LEARNING PURPOSES huheuhe (this is Paint.NET, by the way.)

I cannot stress this enough; YOU NEED A .PNG/RENDER/SEE-THROUGH FILE OF YOUR SUBJECT! This is not going to work if you still have a background behind your subject. Here, I have a transparent layer of Kai with a purple background on a seperate layer. 
The first step is to copy (CTRL-C) and paste (CTRL-V) your subject onto a different layer, so that you have two of them. Notice the layers box: 

You need to move the copy subject (it should be behind your primary) to the side just a little bit. It's important to note which angle the lighting is coming from, because that's the angle where your shadow should be at. For Kai, the lighting is coming down from the right, so I shall place his copy on the left.

Two Kai's?! I think the world would explode with that many /i should shut up/ you don't have to move the copy too far to get the right effect. Here is the first technique that I would usually use; depending on your program, you need to open up an adjustment window and adjust the 'lightness'. It's usually near hue and saturation. I'm going to set the lightness of the copy to -100: 

Now the copy is entirely black. From here, you have to lower the opacity or transparency of the copy. After all, you can always see through day shadows. You can set it relatively low, depending on the effect you want. Play around with it! 

So I've set the opacity to 75. The final step is blurring, to add a bit of realism to the shadow. My favorite blurs are Gaussian and Motion, since they seem to have the right settings for a shadow. So I shall set my gaussian radius to 14;

Two other techniques you can use are blending and filling. Blending modes helps a layer blend into the layers below it (they can be usually found when you double-click a certain layer). Here, I used blending mode 'Multiply' at an opacity of 120, and blurred. 

Filling a shadow gives it a bit of a popping look, so I wouldn't recommend it for realism (angst posters, for example). To fill a shadow, I used the blackened copy of Kai and paintbucket'd it with a neon purple. Depending on what you're using a fill shadow for, I may or may not blur it. 

Here are all three Kai's with three different shadows (if you can handle three times the y):

Shadows (especially fills) are seriously recommended for type! It makes it look a hella lot less boring. I used the same exact techniques for these texts: 

So now you know! (although most of you should know this already; what am I doing with my life) once you master shadows, you will be able to use them anywhere! Here are some example posters with shadows in them: 

That is all! Jenday is out~