The method which I would use would be to make a careful selection of the land area using Quick Mask (unless it is a single colour – in which case just use the Magic Wand). Once you have it selected, hit Ctrl+J to copy the selection to a new layer and then create your drop shadow (hit the fX icon at the bottom of the layers palette and choose ‘Drop Shadow’ from the fly out menu).
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Carol
(Posted from the UK)
Little shadows around the border of the map? I’m not quite sure the effect you’re trying to achieve but I’m picturing more of a vignette look by his/her description.
If you’re just looking for a darkening around the perimeter of the entire image, I’d select the entire image, contract the selection, invert the selection, switch to quickmask and apply a Gaussian blur as desired, switch back and apply a layer mask of that selection. Then I’d probably fill an underlying area with black. Or, take said selection, create a new layer, and fill with black and adjust opacity as desired. Hm…ok come to think of it there are a million ways to do this if you want what I think you want. There might even be an action to do this (like Vignette) but I don’t really play with the actions aside from creating new ones so I’m not sure about that. Anyone else?
Edit* upon rereading the question, Carol is probably right. I’m still not sure what you’re looking for, Stephane.
~Em
