Photoshop Tutorial And Designer: Realistic View Water Reflection

Here I’m going to learn how to easily add a realistic water reflection to your picture.

Here is the photo that I’ll be working with throughout this tutorial:

Also you can use your own pictures or find some appropriate pictures thru the Google Images. Ok, now I will explain you how to make the right reflection. In the beginning you should select the part of image what is above the water, then duplicate it and flip vertical. Then we will process copied part of image with some filters to get realistic view water reflection. Ok, using the Polygonal Lasso Tool create selection as was shown on my picture, which you can see below:

After that press Ctrl+J to copy selected part of image on the new layer. After that use Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical to flip new copied layer vertical and move it down as on picture below.

As you can see the shoreline is rough, that’s why we need to do some correction with it. Use the Eraser Tool to correct it a little bit. But pay your attention that we have some small island from the right side. Don’t remove it from the copied layer.

Use the Polygonal Lasso Tool to select this island and press Ctrl+Shift+J to cut selected part of image on the new layer.

Now, move it a little bit down and apply Edit > Transform > Warp.

Merge this layer with previous again. Before we move to the next step, you need to make displacement map to create the water ripple effect. So, create a new document with the same size. Press D to reset Foreground and Background colors (Foreground color will be black and Background color will be white). Then fill canvas with white color. After that apply Filter > Sketch > Halftone Pattern:

Now you have something like this:

Save this document as Lines.psd and close it. Go back to our main document and select current layer with Select > Load Selection. After that apply Filter > Distort > Ripple:

You can see the result on the picture below:

Then apply Filter > Distort > Displace:

Click OK in the top right corner of the dialog box, and Photoshop will ask you which file you want to use as your displacement map. Choose the file that you just saved a moment ago (Lines.psd).

Now, press Ctrl+T to reduce the height of our reflection and press Enter.

Remove selection with Ctrl+D. After that to make reflection at the bottom of the picture more transparent apply Quick Mask Mode with gradient as below:

Then go back to Standard Mode. Now we have some selected area, press Delete to clear image in it.

Remove selection with Ctrl+D and set up layer opacity to 50%. After that apply Filter > Blur > Motion Blur with similar settings to these:

The result should be next:

And the last one thing that we should add is ripples. For this effect create a new layer and add a few brush strokes with Brush Tool using white color.