Today's Topic: Recreation

Okay so in my goal to recreate http://www.shanewang.com/ I've come across a few things after practicing some methods I got from the forums, and the most common thing I found out that is that whole site is just composed of gradients, right? My question today is, is the footer a gradient as well? Or is it some kind of manipulation. I think it is a gradient.

Also, how can I do the shadows the come out of the sides, I've tried making a box and then creating selections on each side and trying to make a gradient come out but it doesn't look right. Thanks for any help.

it's not always "just gradients", the thing is that you need to know how light works to make something look 3D-ish.
The only tools you really need are the marquee/lasso/pen+makeselection and feather, combined with either brushing with shadow/light or using the brightness thingies. Of course you can do it all using gradients only, but i can't see the point. If you can't "think 3D", then you won't be able to make cool 3D - stuff no matter what the techniques you'd master. This applies to everything you mentioned, I'm sure.

As for a real - techniquebased answer;

to make a shadow, you can either use the drop shadow layer effect, or make a new layer beneath the content box, feather, and fill with black and play with the opacity value of that layer.

"think 3d" ?

Yeah - think of how 3d things look when light is applied to them. Look at your monitor or your mouse or your lamp or something and notice the grooves and the curves and where the light is coming from. I'm not so great at it, but thats what Paavo means and thats how you can make things that look 3d.

tom