Why am I unable to subtly affect drop shadows using the Levels or Curves tools?
Update: Phantasm CS Publisher’s advanced Bitmap Alpha channel controls in the Curves and Levels Effects were introduced to allow control over drop shadows (plus outer glows and blurs). The following explanation only applies to Phantasm CS Designer and Studio… Illustrator allows the easy generation of drop shadows using either the Filter or live Effect tools Stylize ยป Drop Shadow…. Once generated, you would expect to be able to fine-tune these drop shadows using Phantasm CS’ Curves and Levels tools to, for example, ensure a minimum color cut-off point. However, on first appearance, only extreme adjustment of the darkest tone present in the drop shadow seems to have any affect. The reason for this is that by default, Illustrator’s drop shadows are merely a solid color rectangle (the color being specified by the user) with an overlying mask/alpha channel. Therefore the only color present in the drop shadow is the single user-defined shadow tint. The work-around for this issue is to co
