Inner shadow of bevel and emboss not working

Forum|Forum|6 months ago
July 17, 2025
2 replies
268 views

Adobe PhotoShop 26.8.1. Something is wrong with PhotoShop or with my image. As you can see in the image, the shadow, which I have tried setting at 100% shows the same color as the text color. The highlight works, but the shadow does not. I have tried resetting preferences, adjusting the altitude, trying various of the modes, and it does not show. I opened another document where it was working, copied that layer's effects and the shadow did not show. Then I tried pasting that layer into this image and the shadow effect disappeared. I tried setting the image to 16 bit and 32 bit, and it did not work. I updated the program this morning in case that would help, but it did not. I must be missing something. I've been using bevel and emboss for years without this problem. Please help!

Windows

Anshul_Saini

Community Manager

Hi Mary,

Thanks so much for sharing the details and screenshot. I completely understand how frustrating this must be, especially since you’ve already gone through several troubleshooting steps.

From what you’ve described, it sounds like the shadow in the Bevel & Emboss effect isn’t rendering correctly, even at full opacity. You’ve done a great job trying the usual suspects like resetting preferences, testing other bit depths, and copying effects across documents.

To help narrow this down, please try the following quick checks:

Uncheck “Use Global Light” as sometimes that setting causes conflicts between effects on different layers.
One thing that stands out is that the Altitude setting is currently at 0°. This setting controls the light source’s vertical angle, and when it’s set to 0°, it can flatten or completely hide the inner shadow effect depending on other settings.

If you’re comfortable, please share the PSD file and the System Info from Help > System Info; that would really help us investigate.

Let’s work through this together. I’m happy to get this resolved for you!

Best,
Anshul Saini

J

jazz-y

Legend

In your screenshot the shadow mode is set to screen. Change it to multiply mode.