Making a customized drop shadow
by kim@pixelbit.com

Open a new image 500 X 500 transparent.
Your image will wind up being smaller then this but this will give you room to work.

Open the tube that you would like to use.
Shift + D to make a duplicate and close the original to preserve it.
Resize it if needed. Copy
Paste as a new layer (CTRL + L) onto your 500 X 500.
Right click on your butterfly layer in your layer palette and select Duplicate from the drop down menu.

Make the top layer invisible.

Make the bottom tube layer active.
Press SHIFT + L to open the Colorize window.

Set both Hue and Saturation to 0.

Your layer palette should look something like this.

With the bottom tube layer still active, make your deformation tool active.
You will see little squares around your tube.
Press and HOLD your CTRL hey and grab the node shown below. drag it to the left slightly.

Release the CTRL key.
 

With the same node, pull down slightly

In your layer palette, double click on this layer to open the layer properties
Lower the opacity to 50.

Merge visible

copy and paste as a new image to get rid of the un needed transparent areas.
Save as jpg and you're done.