Create Reflections in Photoshop
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AN APPROPRIATE PHOTOGRAPH A picture including water is most obvious.
A REFLECTION OCCURS when a surface bounces back enough of the light that has, in turn, bounced from another object, without distorting or diffusing it so much that it becomes unrecognizable. The blue of the sea is said to be a reflection of the sky above, while in Oregon, a lake reflects Mount Hood so perfectly it’s been called Mirror Lake.
Not everything is a mirror, however, and that distortion and diffusion can be harnessed by digital artists to make reflections that look natural—the great pitfall of trying to add a reflection to an image is ending up with an unrealistic result, and it’s a very easy state to find yourself in.
Reflections, of course, occur perfectly naturally, as anyone who’s ever found themselves captivated by their own face looking back at them from a pool of water can attest. That sort of thing tends to end badly, though, so here we’ll show you how to add a reflection where one isn’t present, using Photoshop—and, hopefully, without the assistance of vengeful goddesses.
1 PICK SOURCE IMAGE As ever, the trick to getting a good effect is to choose your source picture carefully. The longtail boat in our pic was plying its trade on Rajjaprabha Dam Reservoir in Thailand, but the murky nature of the water means it’s not reflected in the surface below. 2 SELECT AREA TO REFLECT We’re doing this in the latest version of Photoshop CC, but there’s nothing here you couldn’t do in Elements, because all the tools you need are there, but they may be found in slightly different places. The first thing to do is to select the area you want to reflect. You can make life easier by choosing something rectangular, but our boat is a very uneven shape. Photoshop comes with a variety of selection tools, from the simple Rectangular Marquee to the freehand Lasso, and the clever Magic Wand and Quick selection tools, which try to guess what your intentions are (with varying degrees of success). The Wand, which selects areas of contiguous color, won’t be much use to us here, and the Lasso will be fiddly, so we’re going to use the Rectangular Marquee, and worry about erasing the bits we don’t want later. However you do it, make sure everything you want to reflect is inside the line of marching ants that marks the boundary of the selection. 3 CREATE NEW LAYER Once you’ve got the area you want to reflect selected, it needs to be copied to another layer. Go to the “Layer” menu, and select “New,” then “Layer Via Copy” [ Image A]. This places a copy of your selected pixels precisely over the top of the original ones. You may not notice any change in the image as it’s displayed, but a “Layer 1” will appear in the Layers palette. 4 FLIP LAYER A reflection is a mirror image of the original, so we need to flip our new layer over. To do this, make sure the new layer is selected in the Layers palette, then head to the “Edit” menu, select “Transform,” then “Flip Vertical” [ Image B]. You’ll notice the difference this time, because the reflection will now be partially covering the original, and you’ll need to shift it down using the Move tool, to get it in the right position at the bottom of the original item. Hold the Shift key while you’re moving it, and it will be constrained in a single direction, meaning you won’t wobble from side to side as you drag the mouse, and then have to spend ages lining it up perfectly.
5 CHANGE BLEND MODE The result of all this probably doesn’t look very natural [ Image C]. The next step will help fix that, and it’s to change the blending mode, so our two layers interact in a slightly different way. Think of it as the light from below, passing through Layer 1 on top, being allowed through, subject to some rules. At the moment, with the blend mode at Normal and 100%, none of it can get through. We’re going to change it to a mode that allows lighter colors to show through—either Lighten or Screen, depending on what looks best for your image. Make sure “Layer 1” is selected, using the dropdown menu on the Layers palette. We’re using “Screen.” 6 ERASE UNWANTED PARTS You should be able to see how your finished reflection will look. We’re going to use the Eraser tool to remove unwanted bits of the original image, left over from where we were lazy with our selecting [ Image D]. You can change the Blend mode back to Normal while you do this, if it makes it easier. There’s no shortcut to this, and you’ll have to do it freehand—keep the edge of your Eraser quite soft to minimize hard transitions, as these will catch the viewer’s eye and look unrealistic. Once you’re done, change it back to Screen or Lighten, and fade down the Opacity using the slider to the right of the Blend mode drop-down. We turned it down to 42 percent, but do whatever looks best. 7 FINAL TOUCHES Finally, we’re going to fade the reflection out with a Layer Mask. Make sure you’ve got “Layer 1” selected, then click the “Layer Mask” button at the bottom of the Layers palette. A new rectangle should appear on your layer’s entry in the palette. Next, make sure you have black and white as your active colors, by pressing D, and select the Gradient tool, often found hiding behind the Paint Bucket. Use this to paint a gradient from top to bottom on your image—one swipe of the mouse should do it, again constraining it with the Shift key to lock it in the vertical. This should fade out your reflection so it’s strongest where it meets the original [ Image E]. Experiment to see what looks best, then save as a PSD, and flatten the layers if you want to export it as a JPEG.