Does anyone know if it is possible to create a "lifted corner" or curved drop shadow effect for a text box?
Something similar to this
drop shadow effect
[Tex/LaTex] Lifted or curved drop shadow
beamertikz-pgf
Related Solutions
You could use the pgf-blur package, which gives you this:
In fact, it can add a "faded" drop shadow to pretty much anything:
The shadow fading is not continuous, like in the previously accepted answer. It fades in a number of discrete steps, but that number can be changed, see the documentation.
Here's the code for the examples:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{shadows.blur}
\usetikzlibrary{shapes.symbols}
\begin{document}
\begin{center}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\node[draw=none,shade,
top color=blue!40,
bottom color=blue!5,
rounded corners=6pt,
blur shadow={shadow blur steps=5}
] {\sffamily\bfseries\large A pretty box};
\node[tape,draw=none,shade,
top color=blue!40,
bottom color=blue!5,
rounded corners=1pt,
blur shadow={shadow blur steps=5,shadow blur extra rounding=1.3pt}
] at (5,0){\sffamily\bfseries\large Another pretty box};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{center}
\end{document}
Edit
Sometimes, PDF renderers will show a dark line in the center of the shadow. This is due to the way they handle anti-aliasing and clipping. To avoid this:
- Use pgf-blur v1.01, which tries hard to hide this artefact
- In Acrobat, turn off the "Page Display" preference "Enhance thin lines". These shadows consist of many thin lines, and they won't look good if Acrobat changes their width
- Don't use too many
blur shadow steps. It looks best if you have about two pixels per step at viewing resolution.
If I zoom the table on page 8 I don't see any drop shadow and all the rules are black; however, if you want to give a drop shadow to the table, you can put the tabular inside a \node and use the shadows library from TikZ:
\documentclass[xcolor={dvipsnames,table}]{beamer}
\usepackage{tikz}
\usetikzlibrary{shadows}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\begin{center}
\begin{tikzpicture}
\node[drop shadow,fill=white,inner sep=0pt]
{\rowcolors{1}{RoyalBlue!20}{RoyalBlue!5}
\begin{tabular}{|l|c|}\hline
J.\ S.\ Bach & 1685--1750 \\
W.\ A.\ Mozart & 1756--1791 \\
L.\ Beethoven & 1770--1827 \\
F.\ Chopin & 1810--1849 \\
R.\ Schumann & 1810--1856 \\ \hline
\end{tabular}%
};
\end{tikzpicture}
\end{center}
\end{frame}
\end{document}
On a side note, and just as a personal opinion, I would remove the vertical rules from the table.
Here's another option using \shadowbox from the fancybox package:
\documentclass[xcolor={dvipsnames,table}]{beamer}
\usepackage{fancybox}
\begin{document}
\begin{frame}
\begin{center}
\setlength\fboxsep{0pt}
\shadowbox{%
\rowcolors{1}{RoyalBlue!20}{RoyalBlue!5}
\begin{tabular}{|l|c|}\hline
J.\ S.\ Bach & 1685--1750 \\
W.\ A.\ Mozart & 1756--1791 \\
L.\ Beethoven & 1770--1827 \\
F.\ Chopin & 1810--1849 \\
R.\ Schumann & 1810--1856 \\ \hline
\end{tabular}%
}
\end{center}
\end{frame}
\end{document}
Best Answer
Here's another approach using
tcolorboxwith version3.05 (2014/05/28)or newer. The lifted shadow of the old answer below has become an integrated feature (with different implementation) and is available by the optiondrop lifted shadow,drop small lifted shadow, ordrop large lifted shadow:Old version of the answer (valid for
tcolorboxolder than version 3.05):The following code adds some new shadow features
drop lifted shadowanddrop heavy lifted shadowtotcolorbox.