How to Create a Cool Shadow Effect in PowerPoint

David Anderson over at Articulate is known for his cool visual design tips and tricks.  He has a great tutorial on creating a page curl shadow effect in PowerPoint.  It’s a great effect to add depth to the objects on your screen.

It requires that you edit points on your PowerPoint shape.  PowerPoint 2007 lets you do that for all of your shapes.  In older versions of PowerPoint, you have to create a shape using the drawing tools and then you can edit them.

PowerPoint Tutorial

Click here to view the tutorial.

If you have PowerPoint 2007, you already have a bunch of nice shadow effects.  But by applying the tips from this tutorial, you’ll be able to make your shadows look more natural and organic.

The basic steps for the PowerPoint tutorial are:

• Create a rectangle shape.
• Convert the shape to freeform.

• Right click on the shape, and select edit points.
• Move the corner points and then use the bezier tool to create your curve.

• Apply a soft edge and fill it with a gray shadow color. 
• Place the shadow under the object and size to get the right effect.

In the tutorial, he also shows how to create a quick Polaroid look for the images.  It’s a great tutorial.  Easy to do and will make your shadows look that much more dynamic.  Give it a try.