The Creative Art of Thumbnails
Most photo thumbnails are miniature versions of the parent photo, meant to be small enough to provide a low-bandwidth, space-friendly version of the picture that also piques enough interest for the user to click through to the larger image. Any of the applications that generate galleries (covered later in this chapter) create thumbnails just like this. For the most part, the result is satisfactory.
Still, for those times when you're embedding a photo into a web page or manually creating your own specialized gallery page, you might want to branch out and try something new.
Adding Drop Shadows
Rather than just create a plain, flat thumbnail, you might consider adding a shadow behind the image, to make the image pop out of the page. Most photo editors provide either plug-ins, specialized routines, or layer effects to create a shadow effect.
Photoshop provides layer styles that can create a beveled look, drop shadow, or other effect directed on the layer edges. It's quite simple to use, too. The first step is to convert your background image to a layer, if you haven't already done so. Double-clicking on the background in the Layers window and accepting the default name will do the trick. The next step is to increase the canvas size to make room for the drop shadow, the term for these shadows. The dialog to adjust the canvas can be accessed through the Image menu. The last step is to open the Layer Style dialog and select Drop Shadow or another effect.
In the ...