adding drop shadow to border

[smiley guy]

I think I have absolutely lost my mind.

I have a simple project of taking a family portrait that I took, cropping it, adding a creative border by way of erasing with a brush to transparency and then adding a drop shadow to that for a slightly raised look. This is not unusual at all. I'm using PSCS2

I opened the photo
saved as "<photo> with border".tiff
chose erase, brush mode, selected a brush
erased some of the outside of the photo to transparent background
went to layer:styles:drop shadow and edited the variables but nothing is showing up either in the image or or in the little preview box in that window.

I thought it might have been the computer or the app but I tried it with some text and it worked fine. I can't seem to do it with the image.

Did I miss a step? I selected the layer but do I have to actually select pixels? Actually, I did both: select layer and then I tried it with selecting pixels, neither worked.

I am going for a walk to the park with my daughter, maybe that will help.

[Kraellin]

i'm not sure 'drop shadow', the tool/filter, will work on a transparent part. try putting a background in there of pure white and try it again.

Craig

[byRo]

Like Craig said, you need something under the photo for the shadow to show up. A transparent background won't show anything.

or....

I suppose that you erased using a brush at less than 100% opacity. In this case you may have what looks like a completely transparent border but is not completely erased.

I've had this happen to me before, only it was the other way around. I had a dark shadow under absolutely nothing. Then I discovered that there was still a very faint residue on the top layer.

It would be nice if the drop shadow was proportional to the layer's opacity, but it ain't - so funny things happen.

Rô

[smiley guy]

Ok, that was definitely part of it. Thanks.

The other big thing was that I had inadvertently selected "hide all effects" somewhere along the line. I realized all the little eyeballs were greyed out. Once I selected "show all effects" everything went much smoother.

Sometimes all it takes is a walk in the park, some fresh air and a little time away from work.

Wow, thanks for that. I'm now going to find a rock and crawl under it...

[Kraellin]

hehe, trust me; we've all been there

Craig