This is for Quinndolyn McInnis Blount, a fellow blogger from EBA who wanted to know how to do this without using Photoshop.
I’m sure doing this in Photoshop will be ten times easier, but so far, I haven’t invested in it time and money-wise.
Here’s my workaround for this. It is a bit longer, but this is what I know.
Detailed step by step explanation
Once you have made your pdf printables, download an image file (jpeg or png format, I choose jpeg) of your printables. (Most probably you may be using Canva, word, powerpoint fro this. They all have options to do this. I will show you how it’s done in Canva because that’s where most people usually make their printables.)
Upload the image/images into powerpoint by going into your toolbar and selecting INSERT>PICTURE>Select your image from the desktop and click to upload it into ppt
After you have uploaded your image/images, make the image smaller so there is space on the slide when we will give it shadow.
Now when you select an image as I selected the first image, a PICTURE TOOLS tab will appear on the top of the FORMAT tab, under this, select PICTURE EFFECTS>SHADOW> whichever shadow style you like (I use the one I circled)
AND/OR
PICTURE EFFECTS>GLOW> gray glow color and whichever glow size you like (I use the biggest or second-biggest glow size)
Now set the images as you want them to appear in their final form.
Then save this slide as a jpeg/png on your desktop by going to the top left FILE>SAVE AS>DESKTOP>a form will pop up> see SAVE AS TYPE space in the form> PNG/JPEG (I choose png here because these graphics are not as high quality as Canva’s. You can choose whichever of the two you prefer.)
Choose whatever name you want. It will be saved as a folder on your desktop. When you click this folder, the image of your shadowed printable will be inside that folder. The b. arrow in the image below is the png/graphic of your printable’s shadowed mockup.
Now you can upload this ‘slide 1’ to Canva and use it on your Pinterest pin or wherever you want to use it. I’m using it for my signup form’s image button which will go into the post.
Download this graphic and put it in your post where you need to.
(If you want to remove the background, then before uploading it to Canva in step 5, upload this image after step 4 to LunaPic and remove the background there: Click LUNAPIC>UPLOAD>CHOOSE FILE> Select that ‘slide 1’ named shadowed mock-up of your printable from your desktop>once it has uploaded then click EDIT from the top toolbar>TRANSPARENT BACKGROUND> click the background or whichever color you want to remove>click SAVE to download this image which now has a transparent background. Now upload this image into Canva and use it as you desire. Here’s how I’m using it to design a pin in Canva.)
If you have any more questions, just let me know.
I hope you found this how-to useful.