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A shadow lifts lettering off the background. Used lightly it makes a name readable over a photo. Used heavily it becomes the style itself, as on retro and varsity designs.

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Turning it on

Select a text layer, open Text Shadow, and switch on Enable Shadow. The shadow types and their controls appear underneath.
The Text Shadow section highlighted, with Enable Shadow switched on, four shadow type tiles labelled Drop, Line, Block and 3D with Drop selected, and sliders for Color set to hash 888888, Offset 20, Angle 135 degrees and Blur 15.

Text Shadow enabled, showing the four shadow types and the controls for the selected one.

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The four shadow types

Click a type to switch. The controls below change with it, because a soft drop shadow needs a blur while a hard block shadow does not.

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The controls

Keep the angle the same on every layer of a design. Shadows falling in different directions on the same product read as a mistake, because in the real world there is only one light source.

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Getting a shadow that survives printing

The preview is generous. Ink is not.
  • Grey beats black. A mid grey shadow reads as depth. A pure black one reads as a printing fault.
  • A little offset goes a long way. Large offsets look dramatic on screen and muddy at print size, because the shadow starts competing with the letters instead of supporting them.
  • Blur is expensive on fabric. A soft gradient that looks smooth on a poster can band or speckle when printed on a t-shirt. On garments, Line or Block is often the safer choice.
Check the shadow against your longest test name. A shadow tuned on a short word can collide with neighbouring letters once the text shrinks to fit a longer one.

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Where to next

Text color and stroke

Fill color and outlines.

Curved and warped text

Arc, wave, circle, and other text shapes.

Text content and style

Size ranges, spacing, and alignment.

Preview settings

Make the design sit convincingly on the product.