Requested Add shadow to an image would be great

[Frichmout_fr]

Hi from France,
I can do almost everything I need with Irfanview, except adding a shadow to the right bottom of an image.
It would be great to have this improvement, including batch support, of course.

great soft, great use; big thanks

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

You can do it, of course, but not in one simple step — it would be an obvious thing to add to the new border/frame option.

See this tutorial on adding a drop shadow

[derniwi]

Yes, this is an idea, but it is not smooth, and creating a smooth drop shadow is a lot of work.
But as said in other discussions it might be worth to take a look at other programs and free IV from things for editing pictures. Many people just use jpegs and don't know that every edit will cause a new compression with loosing data...

[Sam_Zen]

A true 'drop shadow' would need the object to be in a layer.

[Bhikkhu Pesala]

To be honest, this feature doesn't belong in an image viewer. If a job's worth doing, its worth doing properly, so unless you want just a simple black or grey drop shadow that might be done with some slight improvement to the border/frame plugin, you should use a program that offers full 32-bit transparency, and all the other features needed to produce realistic drop shadows.

Take a look at the free PagePlus Starter Edition. It has full control over drop shadows from the context toolbar — intensity, colour, blur, distance, opacity, direction can all be controlled.

[derniwi]

Or just use GIMP, which is free and has a drop shadow function built in.
The only problem is GIMP can just work with 8bpp, but this is not a problem for jpegs. On the other hand IView just operates with 8bpp, too.