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I am trying to add a drop shadow effect to text in iMovie. The problem I'm encountering is that there doesn't appear to be a drop shadow setting and the effect is applied seemingly at random. All the sites I have found online refer to this as the outline effect, but it is a separate effect entirely. I have yet to find reference to how to manipulate the drop shadow on text in iMovie.

For example, here is what text looks like when using the "lower third" text template. It appears without a drop shadow, with no means of adding it. This is the type of text I want to add drop shadow to.

enter image description here

And here is text created using the "scrolling credits" text template. It appears with drop shadow, but if you edit the preset text it may or may not retain the drop shadow.

enter image description here

Where is the control for drop shadow?

Brett White
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2 Answers2

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This YouTube video shows that widening the font panel reveals four controls at the top for drop shadows (opacity, blur, offset, and angle). So they're right there in the font picker window when you're manipulating your text:

enter image description here

hairboat
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    ah, apple. making things easier by hiding them from you. – ericsoco Aug 24 '13 at 17:27
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    The missing piece of information for me as a non-Apple user here was that in the combobox where you see the names of all fonts while editing text properties, you have to go to the very bottom of the list, where you see a Show Fonts item which you have to select in order to see the dialog depicted in the screenshot above. Nevertheless it appears to be impossible to control the color of the drop shadow, which would be particularly useful when superimposing the text onto a photo. – 0xC0000022L Jan 04 '15 at 20:38
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  • Create a title using the "Scrolling Credits" template, which almost always creates text with drop shadow
  • Type in your text
  • Double click on the title, causing the "inspector" menu to pop up
  • Manually change the template from "Scrolling Credits" to "lower third" or whatever other template you want

Very roundabout and inefficient, but it worked.

Brett White
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