The shadow tool lets you quickly and easily apply, remove and modify realistic semi-transparent (or "soft") shadows. Soft shadows give your image the effect of standing out from the background, adding more realism to your artwork.

To apply a shadow simply select the Shadow Tool and then select the type of shadow you're looking for from the shadow infobar.

There are three basic types of shadow: a wall shadow, which gives the selected object the appearance of hanging on a wall ...

...or a floor shadow for creating the impression that your object is resting on a floor or surface ...

...or you can apply a soft glow around your image.

But of course you can edit the shadow as well - the position, the color, the blur and transparency right on screen without having to even open a new dialog box or go to a new menu.

You can move the shadow in real-time on screen by simply dragging it - within the Shadow Tool you can just drag the shadow to a new position. Or for precise positioning of wall shadows you can nudge the shadow using the vertical and horizontal nudge arrows on the Shadow Tool infobar.

You can change the color by selecting the shadow and clicking the new color on the Color Line.

You can also change the degree of blur, by either using the slider - notice how it changes interactively on screen as you drag - or you can manually enter the value in pixels.

Left-right: minimum (zero) blur, medium blur, maximum blur

And in the same way you can set the level of the shadow's transparency.

Left-right: 0% transparent, 50% transparent, 80% transparent

You can even achieve a non-linear rate of change across the shadow transparency by using the profile dialog. Click on the profile icon on the infobar:

You can select a pre-set profile from the drop down menu or your can experiment with the sliders to achieve just the result you are looking for. For example, moving the slider full right would result in the transparency fading out slowly at first and then rapidly falling off.