How to make a long shadow effect for free

The long shadow effect is one filter away in Paint by Zaweba: choose Filter > Stylise > Long Shadow. It casts a shadow that stretches from your shape at an angle, the look made popular by flat design icons and logos. Put the shape on its own layer, run the filter, and you have a long shadow without drawing it by hand.

A long shadow gives flat artwork some depth without breaking the flat style. It suits app icons, badges, bold lettering and simple illustrations, and it's quick enough to try on anything.

Step by step with long shadows

Start with the shape you want to cast the shadow: a white icon on a coloured square, a bold word or a logo mark. Keep it on a transparent layer of its own, above the background. Duplicate that layer, so you have a clean copy to keep on top.

Select the lower copy and choose Filter > Stylise > Long Shadow. The shadow grows out from the shape. Move the original copy back on top if needed so the shape sits crisply above its shadow.

To keep the shadow inside a square or circle background, as with flat icons, mask the shadow layer to the background shape so it stops at its edge.

Making it look right

Classic long shadows are a darker shade of the background colour, not black. Lower the shadow layer's opacity or set it to Multiply so it darkens the colour beneath rather than covering it. For a softer, more modern look, fade the shadow out along its length with a gradient on a layer mask.

Keep every shadow in a design at the same angle. Mixed angles make it look like several lights are shining at once, and the effect falls apart. The usual choice is 45 degrees down to the right.

Mistakes to avoid with long shadows

Running the filter on a layer that also has the background on it gives you a shadow of the whole square, not the icon. Separate them first. Very detailed shapes, such as thin script text, can produce messy shadows with gaps; long shadows work best on bold, simple shapes.

Don't flatten too early. Keep the shape, shadow and background on separate layers in the .ptx, so you can change the colour or angle later.

The other Stylise filters

Long Shadow sits among the Stylise filters with Emboss, Edge Detect (glowing edges, trace contour, colour edges, Sobel, Prewitt and Laplace), Find Edges, Solarise, Wind, Extrude, Tiles, Diffuse, Bump Map, Buttonise, Chisel, Balls and Bubbles. Buttonise and Chisel give raised edges that pair with long shadows for a chunky button style. Extrude and Tiles break a picture into blocks for a graphic background.

For shadows that stay live and editable, Layer Art effects add drop shadows and other styles that you can change at any time. Use those for ordinary drop shadows and Long Shadow for the flat design look.

Paint by Zaweba is free software for Windows that works offline, so you can make icons and graphics without an online generator.