I have been using the Expression Studio 3 for only a day or two, but I have played with Expression Studio 2 before and was frustrated with Expression Design. Let me first say, I am NOT a designer, so I am not familiar with Adobe Photoshop for image editing either. The limited image manipulation I have done has been in Paint.NET.

I’ve never had a problem putting a drop shadow on some text, until I tried to do it in Expression Design. Last night, however, I figured it out. So I put some text on an image.

If you collapse the “Appearance” box, you’ll see the “Effects” box below.

And the little “fx” button with an arrow next to it.

When you click on the arrow, choose “Effects” –> “Drop Shadow”.

And viola!

I hope this helps someone get past a small hump in learning curve for Expression Design 3. I am now able to use it for most of the stuff I do (which ain’t much, let me tell you).