---

How Shadows Work

Shadows in Quartz are part of the graphics state. You call the function CGContextSetShadow, passing a graphics context, offset values, and a blur value. After shadowing is set, any object you draw has a shadow drawn with a black color that has a 1/3 alpha value in the DeviceRGB color space. In other words, the shadow is drawn using RGBA values set to {0, 0, 0, 1.0/3.0}.

You can draw colored shadows by calling the function CGContextSetShadowWithColor, passing a graphics context, offset values, a blur value, and a CGColor object. The values to supply for the color depend on the color space you want to draw in.

If you save the graphics state before you call CGContextSetShadow or CGContextSetShadowWithColor, you can turn off shadowing by restoring the graphics state. You also disable shadows by setting the shadow color to NULL.

---