Whether it is a text or an icon, you can use this free Photoshop Action designed by Zinx to apply long shadow effect. There are a lot of Long Shadow Generator Actions for Photoshop but I am not satisfied with anyone of them because they don’t let you customize the shadow. They set their own opacities and fill.

• That’s why I created Long Shadow Generator Photoshop Action (atn) – to save you lots of time and to help you produce very high quality, always perfect shadows! This action works with rasterized layers, text and vectors. With several provided actions you will be able to produce variety of shadows.
• Long Shadow Photoshop Effects for CS6+. A few customers have asked for a photoshop version of my Long Shadow Illustrator styles, so here they are! 3 different styles - solid, multiplied and faded; 4 shadow angles for each style. Help file included; Uses smart objects for easy long shadow effects in seconds! Easily change color with layer effects.

Long Shadow Photoshop Actions is a series of 2 different actions. These Photoshop actions are easy to use in addition to being well-crafted. Give a try to our Shadow Mockups as well. Create a Long Shadow Text Effect in Photoshop Using Layer Styles. This opens the door to creating more advanced effects quickly (and more importantly, non-destructively). This works well especially with text effects. In the past, it could be cumbersome to create a simple effect such as a long shadow, which often required several steps.

Photoshop Long Shadow Plugin

So, I decided to make my own Photoshop Action to create shadow of text content and leave it as it is, as we can set the Opacity manually as per the desire.

How to Use this Photoshop Action

Download the actions from the link below and install it on your Photoshop. Since I made it on Adobe Photoshop CC, it should work on major versions of Photoshop. Double click the .atn file to install it.

There are 2 actions LS #1 and LS#2.

LS #1 creates short shadows. Run LS #1 once it will create a solid shadow of 4 pixels 45 degree to the right. You can run LS #1 multiple times as per your desire to increase the length of the shadow. The output shadows aren’t grouped.

LS #2 creates a much bigger shadow in a single run and takes more time to complete as it involves Duplicating the main Layer multiple times. The output shadows are grouped.

You have to use the LS#2 action as LS#1 is a support action for LS#2. And after that, you need to select the “Shadow” group and drag the opacity down to your desired value. I didn’t set the opacity in the action itself so that users can set it according to themselves. You can also set your desired percentage of filling and Blending Options if you want.

Long Shadow Photoshop Download

Since it creates over 300 Duplicate Layers. it takes some time to complete the action.

Download (2KB)

Here’s a short video tutorial.

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Follow these easy steps to learn how to add a drop shadow to text in Photoshop. This can be applied to any raster or vector object in Photoshop as well as type.

Step 1.
Create a new document and select the type tool from the toolbar. Also choose a colour to use by clicking on the colour swatch at the bottom of the toolbar.

Step 2.
Draw a rectangle on the canvas with the type tool from top left to bottom right, and type the word or phrase you wish to add the drop shadow to.

Step 3.
Use the Character panel, to change the font and size of the type.

Step 4.
There are 3 different ways of acessing the drop shadow panel, this is just personal preference for which you find easiest to use..
A)Double click the layer with the type on it in the layer palette, a panel will appear where you can choose drop shadow from the left hand menu.
B) Select the type layer then click on the fx icon at the bottom of the palette and choose drop shadow from the menu.
C) Go to Layer > Layer Style > Drop Shadow.

Step 5.
If you move the panel to the side so that it’s not covering the canvas (just click, hold and drag the panel by the top bar) you will see that you already have a preview of what the drop shadow will look like on your lettering.

Step 6.
Move the sliders and opacity to get a different shadow depth. Below are 4 examples of the settings on the panel and the effect it will create:

A.

B.

C.

D.

Step 7.

Click ok to close the panel once you are happy with the drop shadow settings. The text is still editable so you can amend the text and apply other effects after you have applied the drop shadow.

The example below shows the last drop shadow example from above but with the text the same colour as the background.