Element Shadows

A drop shadow lifts an element off the canvas: cards read as cards, hero shapes get depth, and a key element separates from a busy background. The Shadow controls live in the element's right-click menu, right after Border, and work on anything that draws a visible body — shapes (icons and data shapes included), sticky notes, images, and link cards. Text, arrows, and freehand strokes don't carry shadows (a rectangular shadow under a line reads as a glitch, not a style).

Picking a preset

Right-click an element and open the Shadow category. Five tiles cover the common looks:

• None removes the shadow.
• Soft, Drop, and Lifted are increasing steps of elevation, from a whisper of depth to floating well off the page.
• Hard is the zero-blur offset shadow, the crisp "poster" look.

Hovering a tile previews it live on the element; clicking commits it. The same category appears in the multi-select toolbar's Style flyout, where a preset applies to the whole selection at once.

Dialling it in with sliders

Below the presets, four sliders give you the exact shadow:

• Offset X and Offset Y (each up to 24px either way) set where the shadow falls, which reads as where the light comes from.
• Blur (0 to 48px) sets how soft the edge is; zero is a hard edge.
• Opacity sets the shadow's strength.

Dragging any slider while the element has no shadow starts you from the Drop preset rather than from nothing, so the first drag always produces a visible shadow you can then shape. A whole slider drag is one undo step.

Good to know

• The colour is fixed to a dark ink, so shadows always read as shade and keep working when you switch themes. Themes never add or change shadows.
• Exports match the canvas: PNG, SVG, and PDF exports, plus snapshots and embeds, render the same shadow you see.
• The format painter copies shadows along with the rest of an element's styling. Reset style clears the shadow; Reset to theme leaves it alone, since it only touches colours.