In QuarkXPress 7, you can add a drop shadow to any page item, and if you’re clever you can create an illusion of a shadow without anything casting it.

The trick is to do two things:

1. Reduce the item’s opacity to 0%
2. Make sure the Inherit Opacity checkbox is disabled in the Drop Shadows tab of the Measurements palette. The result is a shadow behind a transparent object.

Jay Nelson

Jay Nelson is the editorial director of PlanetQuark.com, and the editor and publisher of Design Tools Monthly. He’s also the author of the QuarkXPress 8 and QuarkXPress 7 training titles at Lynda.com, as well as the training videos Quark includes in the box with QuarkXPress 7 . In addition, Jay writes regularly for Macworld and Photoshop User magazines and speaks at industry events.