In general shadows are used to give depth and then tweaked for color, blur, and offset. This example is the basic shadow I used on this site applied to different text formats. The block text to the far right needs a more focused shadow.

This shows the same type of shadow as above only using full black for shadow color. Using the same color for elements and shadow generally doesn’t work out.

Back to the same shade from the first example, but used a much tighter focus to shadow. This can work well for a number of elements, but best with delicate objects.

For lighter colors go with contrasting shadow color. The light gray from our first example just doesn’t cut it with white text.

Notice the big improvement with a black shadow.

Ever tried white text on white background? Use a very blurred shadow with no offset to help make elements stand out.

One other cool thing with NetStudio is that you can use an image for your shadow. For this one I used a black and white photo of a car going down a highway for the shadow fill (shadow for this example is offset way below the text). For this to work use “portrait” oriented pics with a very blurred shadow so that the entire image shows up.