For my Kids, Alphabet, Words iOS app called Spell Cubes im using shadows a lot, to create depth to the user interface. Im always looking for ways to optimize my apps and in this case i didnt want to use Starlings Shadow filters because of performance issues.
Instead I decided to use shadows created from Photoshop as textures. Way faster than using Shadow Filter. Only minus with this approach was that the shadow textures took up a lot space in my Texture Atlasses, Damn!
But then I got the idea that I could try to use Feathers Scale3Image component to be able to create a small Texture shadow that could scale to any sizes. It Worked perfectly!
Below is a short video showing the concept implementet in Spell Cubes