Lift the photo off the page.
Six looks — Lifted, Pinned, High, Block, Riso, Halo — plus light direction, height off the page, softness, strength and colour, a margin, a tilt and paper colours. Every number is read as a share of your photo, so a phone shot and a 40-megapixel file land the same. For full mockup compositing, grab a proper app.
Add a drop shadow to a photo
Put a photo on a paper background and cast a shadow under it, so it reads as a print lying on a page.
What you can change
- Looks
- Light direction
- Height off the page
- Softness
- Strength
- Shadow ink
- Flat graphic shadow
- Margin
- Tilt
- Paper grain
How it works
- 01Drop in a photo, or open one of the samples.
- 02Start from one of six looks — Lifted, Pinned, High, Block, Riso, Halo — then set the light direction, the height off the page, softness, strength and shadow ink, and the margin, tilt and paper underneath.
- 03Download it at full resolution. Nothing is uploaded — the work happens in this browser tab.
Casting the shadow…
Add a drop shadow to a photo
Put a photo on a paper background and cast a shadow under it, so it reads as a print lying on a page.
What you can change
- Looks
- Light direction
- Height off the page
- Softness
- Strength
- Shadow ink
- Flat graphic shadow
- Margin
- Tilt
- Paper grain
How it works
- 01Drop in a photo, or open one of the samples.
- 02Start from one of six looks — Lifted, Pinned, High, Block, Riso, Halo — then set the light direction, the height off the page, softness, strength and shadow ink, and the margin, tilt and paper underneath.
- 03Download it at full resolution. Nothing is uploaded — the work happens in this browser tab.
Casting the shadow…
Six places lift beats flat
- 01 for portfolios
A floating photo on a paper portfolio page
Designer portfolio pages live and die on photo presentation. The Lifted look on a paper background gives you a contact shadow at the near edge and a soft falloff behind it, which is what makes a photo read as curated. Drop the result straight into a Notion portfolio, a Cargo site, or a printed PDF.
- 02 for moodboards
Pasted-on-paper feel for a Pinterest pin
The Pinned look tilts the photo 2.5° and keeps the shadow tight, so it reads as something taped to a page rather than uploaded to a feed. Run a hero photo through here, drop straight onto a board, watch the saves.
- 03 for ig
A scrapbook-feel post for Instagram
IG square posts with a tilted photo on kraft paper read as 'analog' even though everything is digital. Pinned look, kraft background, tilt pushed to 4°, strength up. Stop scroll, get saves.
- 04 for editorial
A magazine-style hero on a white field
Magazine spreads use generous white space and a single perfectly-shadowed hero photo. The High look on a pure white background, margin at 25%. The photo reads as 'editorial', not 'phone shot'.
- 05 for ecommerce
A product photo with a flat-design long shadow
Flat-design product photography uses long, hard-edged shadows pointing diagonally. The Riso look — a hard terracotta offset with no blur, light coming from the top left — gives that art-directed feel without a lighting rig.
- 06 for stickers
A photo that looks like a hand-cut sticker
Run a transparent-background cutout (from Background Remover) through here with the Block look. The shadow follows the cutout's own outline, not its bounding box, so the hard edge turns it into a sticker — looks die-cut, ready to print on sticker paper.
Frequently asked
Does the photo upload anywhere? +
No. The shadow renders on a canvas in your browser. Your photo never touches our servers — we don't run an image pipeline at all.
What's the difference between the presets? +
Lifted is a photo sitting just off the page — a tight contact shadow at the near edge and a soft spread behind it. Pinned sits closer and tilts. High is held well clear of the surface, so the shadow spreads. Block and Riso are hard graphic offsets with no blur, in ink and in clay. Halo is a warm glow with no direction at all.
How do I get a transparent PNG? +
Pick the Transparent background in the side panel. The export becomes a PNG with the photo and its shadow on transparent — perfect for layering onto a custom background in another design tool.
Will the shadow look good in print? +
Soft shadows reproduce well in print at 300 DPI. Hard-edged shadows (Block and Riso, softness 0) print exceptionally well — they're effectively flat color blocks. Subtle shadows under 30% opacity may be lost on uncoated cream paper; bump to 40%+ if printing on warm stock.
How big is the export? +
Your photo's own pixels plus the margin around it, so a 4000×3000 photo at the default 20% margin comes out around 5200×4200. If the margin you pick is too small to hold the shadow or a tilt, the tool widens it for you and says so under the preview — nothing clips. Very large files are capped at 16 megapixels so the export never comes back blank on a phone.
Can I rotate without a shadow? +
Yes — drag strength to 0 and the shadow disappears, but the tilt still applies. Useful for the 'tilted photo on paper' look without any drop shadow at all.
now what?
A few moves after the float
next →
Add Text to Photo
Caption the floated piece for a portfolio page.
Open
next →
Photo Mat & Border
Place the floated piece inside a paper mat for print.
Open
next →
Pinterest Pin Maker
Reframe the mockup as a Pinterest pin.
Open
next →
Social Banner
Crop wide for a portfolio banner.
Open
next →
Shape Crop
Crop the subject to a circle before floating.
Open
next →
Background Replace
Swap the backdrop entirely with AI.
OpenThe rest of this shelf
Polaroid Maker
Any photo, wrapped in paper with a handwritten caption.
Open
Photo Strip Maker
Four photos, B&W mode, handwritten caption.
Open
Diptych Maker
Two photos, side-by-side or stacked.
Open
Vintage Postcard
Greetings caption, faux stamp, postmark, paper texture.
Open
Background Remover
Cut the background out of any photo in one click.
Open
Text Behind Subject
Drop a word behind your subject, magazine-cover style.
OpenOne photo, one shadow.
This floats a single photo on paper and gets the falloff right. Multi-photo mockups, device frames, perspective transforms and brand-system deliverables are a design-tool job — Figma, Sketch or Affinity Designer at that scope.