How can I put a drop shadow around a white rectangle on a pale yellow ground without a plugin?

[Geist]

I apologise in advance if this question has been answered, but I have spent literally hours here and elsewhere trying to figure out how to do the following.

I want to have a white rectangle, without a black or other border, sitting on a pale yellow ground. But so the rectangle does not look pasted onto the ground, I want a drop shadow around two of the sides. I do not want to use a plugin for this.

Thanks in anticipation.

[Sarkut]

Fill your background layer with pale yellow.

Make a Rectangle selection.

Make a new layer.

Fill the selection with black.

Make a new layer.

Fill the selection with white.

In the Layers window, click on the black rectangle layer.

Press Esc to deselect.

Apply Gaussian blur.

Use the Move Selected Pixels tool to move the shadow so that it shows on 2 sides only.

Press F4, and adjust Opacity, if needed.

.

Edited March 12, 2011 by Sarkut

[pdnnoob]

Just out of curiosity, why wouldn't you want to just use a plugin and be done? It just seems to be a much better and easier solution to me...

[Geist]

Fill your background layer with pale yellow.

Make a Rectangle selection.

Make a new layer.

Fill the selection with black.

Make a new layer.

Fill the selection with white.

In the Layers window, click on the black rectangle layer.

Press Esc to deselect.

Apply Gaussian blur.

Use the Move Selected Pixels tool to move the shadow so that it shows on 2 sides only.

Press F4, and adjust Opacity, if needed.

.

Thank you so much for your reply, Sarkut - and for not posting a load of links!

It worked easily and excellently. In the fourth step, I filled the selection with grey (gray) as this suited my needs better.

Once again, thank you.

Geist

[Geist]

Just out of curiosity, why wouldn't you want to just use a plugin and be done? It just seems to be a much better and easier solution to me...

Hello Noob.

I don't want to use a plugin for two reasons.

First, I had a couple of plugins and every time I opened Paint.net, it told me there were updates to the plugins (not to the program Paint.net) and asked me whether I wanted to download them. But whether I answered 'yes' or 'no', my computer would then freeze for maybe a minute. No doubt this is a problem with my particular set-up, but I became so fed up with it that I uninstalled the plugins - and don't now regret doing so.

The second reason is that I am new to Paint.net and in addition a lot of the things I am trying to do I have not previously done with any program. That being so, I want to go slowly and understand the basic principles of this kind of work. When or if I become as proficient as posters offering solutions here I will no doubt be installing and using plugins left, right and centre (center)!

Geist

Edited March 12, 2011 by Geist

[pdnnoob]

solution to first problem: find the plugins on the forum and re-download them, then replace the old files with the new manually.

solution to second problem: you're already on the right track. keep it up ^^

noob

[barbieq25]

PDNNoob, there are times when the drop shadow is not precise enough either.

In this tute I used a different method because I have greater control over the placement etc.

I do understand where you are coming from, just the same.