Help me get the right clipping mask in ps.

FightingChance

I'm having a little trouble making the right clipping mask for what I want to do. I have this here:





The red portion is on a layer, and the white outline (which I made by expanding a border slection, so it does occlude some of the red) is on a seperate layer, so I can change it in the future if I want to.

What I want to do is use a layer effect and just create a simple drop shadow. Unfortunately, when I create the drop shadow on the white outline layer, the shadow falls on the inside as well, like this:



I'm trying to use a clipping mask to block out the shadow that falls inside the red area but am having trouble. Can clip masks affect layer styles?

Option

Why not just use layer>layer style>stroke to get the white and drop shadow that?

FightingChance

[ QUOTE ]
Why not just use layer>layer style>stroke to get the white and drop shadow that?

[/ QUOTE ]

That's a good idea. I hid my white outline layer and stroked the red layer with a white outline. The stroke isn't as clean as what I had but it'll work; the issue now is that the drop shadow layer effect does not include the stroked area, so I have to crank up the distance to get it to show; as well, it doesn't stretch all the way to the left and right sides since it's generating the shadow only from the red area.

FightingChance

Alright, I've done it but the solution is a little ungainly and I'd like to get a better one.

I duplicated my white outline layer, then erased the top portion of that layer, used the drop shadow style on that layer. Shown with the original white outline layer, it appears contiguous. Luckily there are no transparency issues but like I said, this method seems forced versus a proper mask.

MoP

Put the red layer on top of the white layer? Or am I getting the wrong idea about what you want to do?

Option

Or instead, right click on the layer style layer (the stroke in this case) and hit create layer, this will turn it into a standard layer, merge it with the red shape layer, and then drop shadow that. should be coming up rosy if all goes well.

IronHawk

you could also make the white part solid. That would eliminate the interior of the border.

Option

Yeah, IronHawk's solution is the same as mine, when you make that stroke a actual layer, it just makes a solid white shape underneath the red, with the "stroke" bit poking out from the sides.