Creating Drop Shadow in Effects

• The easiest way to create a drop shadow in Illustrator is by using the supplied tool in the Effects menu. Select the vector image to which you would like to add the shadow. This is done with the arrow tool or by clicking CTRL-A. Click "Effects" > "Stylize" > "Drop Shadow." Then, adjust the settings in the Drop Shadow options dialog box. The default mode is Multiply and can be changed if desired. Opacity is the amount of transparency in the drop shadow. Increase the opacity to make the drop shadow darker. X-offset and Y-offset allow you to change the angle of the shadow, and there are a "blur" amount and shadow color available for tweaking.
  
  

Other Methods

• You can also create your own drop shadow by copying the text layer and filling it with a gradient -- a radial black to gray or linear, black to transparent. The trick is to copy the outline of the text to create a new, fill-able shape. This is fairly easy in Illustrator. Just click "Text" > "Create Outlines" to get the path you need. Once you have the outline of the text, you can create a radial gradient to go underneath the text, or you can shear it to the right or left to create a more traditional drop shadow. You can also just fill and feather the outline and place it behind the original text, shifting it just a little to show the shadow along two edges, adding depth and "pop" to the text.
  
  

Pros and Cons of Vector Drop Shadows

• Vector drop shadows provide the same advantage as the vector logo or text. They are infinitely scale-able, and thus work incredibly well for any logo purpose. The only difficulty with using a vector drop shadow is that this scale-ability is often lost when the final image is exported in a raster format, negating the original, integral nature of the vector graphic. If the text is taken into a Photoshop graphic or exported as a JPG, GIF or BMP, creating the drop shadow in Illustrator is essentially a waste of time.
  
  

Integration With Photoshop

• If the text is to be used as part of a larger piece, and it is going to be a piece of a Photoshop document, it makes more sense to import it from Illustrator into Photoshop as a Smart Object. Photoshop's drop shadow effects are more comprehensive, offering more options than Illustrator's, and unless the drop shadow needs to be part of the original text, you will save time and have a better finished product doing it in Photoshop.