Sometimes, when you take an uninteresting photo, you search for ways of improving it. Adding a reflection is a great way to draw attention and improve a dull photo. Another reason for adding a reflection, is that the water was dirty at the time of shooting and the shot was ruined; or you wanted to add reflections (the real way, making use of the slow shutter speed) but you didn’t have the necessary gear to take the shot (camera with manual settings, tripod, filters etc.). These are some reasons I can think of, off the top of my head. It’s really easy to add a reflection in Photoshop. In this article I’ll explain you how to do it in post-processing.

Simple Fake Reflection

For the first part of this tutorial, we’ll use a photo I took when I was in Florence. There are some issues I need to address to right from the beginning. In order to make it easy for yourself, it’s important that you have a good exposed photo and the subject is straight towards the lens (I’ll talk about correct exposure in future articles, so make sure you subscribe). If not, the reflection effect will be much harder to replicate. In the last part of this article, I’ll show you how to deal with vanishing points and how to approach the task of adding a reflection.

Let’s head over to Photoshop to learn how to do that! If you don’t have Photoshop, you can download a free trial for 30 days.

Layers

As with all other articles on this website, it is good practice to apply the changes on a separate layer. In this way, you are performing non-destructive editing. To read more about this method of editing, and learn about layers, check out the article: Guide to using layers in Photoshop.

Make sure that the Layers windowis visible on your screen. If it’s not, go to Window » Layers (shortcut: F7). I prefer hiding all windows from my workspace except the Options, Tools and Layers window. This gives me more screen space, allowing me to work on a bigger representation of a photo.

After you enabled the Layers window, we need to duplicate the layer. This will allow for a second copy of the buildings that will act as the reflection. If you don’t know how to do that, read the article pointed earlier. Next, we need to rotate the top layer vertically. To do that, go to Edit » Transform » Flip Vertical.

From there I add a mask to the layer. If you don’t know how to add masks, check out this article: Guide to using masks in Photoshop.

Check that your colour palette is black/white. From the tools window, select the Gradient Tool (shortcut: Shift+G), make sure that Linear Gradient is selected and drag a line from the top of the photo ’till the vertical middle of the photo or so. Repeat the process if necessary. Note that you can begin the gradient from wherever you want.

TIP: to make perfect straight lines, have the Shift key pressed whilst drawing the gradient.

After you’ve done that, take the Move Tool (shortcut: Shift+V) and move the layer down until it matches the reflection.

Adding Waves

To make the reflection more realistic, we will add some fake waves to it. With the same layer selected, go to Filter » Distort » Wave. I won’t go ahead and explain all the different settings of this effect. The best way to learn to use it is to experiment with it. Copy the same values from the image below if you want to replicate the same result as mine:

If you copied the same values as mine, you should have the following photo. I prefer to reduce the opacity of the reflection just a bit, to make it more realistic. In real life, the contrast and colours lose some of their value when reflected in the water because not all the light rays that hit the water will come back out (Read more about Reflection and Refraction). From the Layers Window, I reduce the opacity of the reflection layer to 90%.

Advanced Reflection

As mentioned above, when you have a photo with vanishing points, it’s much harder to recreate the effect. Wikipedia (2009) defines a vanishing point as “a point in a perspective drawing to which parallel lines not parallel to the image plane appear to converge”. Take for example this photo:

Repeating the steps taught earlier, won’t get you anywhere:

We need a different approach to add a realistic reflection for this case.
First, you repeat the same steps above, resulting to a photo similar with the above. Next you go to Edit » Free Transform. When you select the tool, a couple of boxes appear on top, under the menu. In order to rotate the layer, you change the value inside the 5^th box from the left. A negative amount will tilt the photo anti-clockwise and a positive amount will tilt the photo clockwise.

Try to match the two vanishing point lines so that they become parallel. When you’re done with that, press Enter on your keyboard to apply the changes. Then, select the Move Tool and move the reflection layer up, in order to overlap the lines.

Next, we’ll use the Skew Tool to distort the layer. To find it, go to Edit » Transform » Skew. Take the small squares located on the four corners of the layer and move them in the direction shown in the image below:

Try to match the position shown in the photo above of the “skew box”. After you’ve finished, press Enter on your keyboard to apply the changes. Note that this shape applies for this photo only. Try to experiment with the Skew Tool to get the vertical lines of the buildings to match with the vertical lines in the reflection.

You can make any additional changes required to the mask or move the layer up or down accordingly. Follow the same procedure explained in the previous section of this article in order to add some waves and finally reduce the opacity of the layer.

Here’s the before and after version. Without doubt, the finished version looks way better:

Conclusion

A lot of tools were covered in this article. I tried making the tutorial as easy as possible. Don’t forget to try it out by yourself and see what results you can come up with. When done right, this effect can really improve your photos! And for some inspiration, here are some photos of mine which feature this effect:

References:

• Vanishing Point – Wikipedia (2010). ‘Vanishing point’. [Online]. Available at:
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanishing_point [Accessed on 10 July 2010]