How To Create Realistic Water Reflections On Dry Land

1. Introduction: Hi, everyone. I'm Dennis LeMay A while back, I did a tutorial on ah, very basic method of creating reflection over water on an image that included water. But today we're gonna have some fun. We're gonna take a basic average and create a rippling water reflection in photo shop. You could take this particular image. And then if I zoom up on here, create a rippling water effect as if you've taken a pebble and threw it in sort of water. And then in the second segment, we're again, we're gonna take a basic image, and I'm gonna show you how to create a realistic one reflection effect such as this one. These are kind of fun to do. I'm hoping that after the tutorials that you select some of your images and try it, it's fun. And so we'll talk to you to the next section. 2. How To Add A Rippling Wter Reflection In Photoshop: Okay. Welcome again. As you can see, I have a dry landscape, and we want to create a reflection with circular ripples, as if you're taking a pebble and throw it into the water. Now, before you do that, uh, check view and make sure that snap is checked. Also, this is a 16 bit image. I need to change it to eight bits simply because some of the tools won't work in 16. So there you go. All right, we're gonna do this in 16 steps. And, um, if you if you want to, um, check the attachment that I put in scale share, you can print that attachment and just follow me right on the editorial with the with the instructions on the attachment. And, um, when I say command, which is a max term on your keyboard, if you have a PC, that means control. So Mac means control on a PC. Command control. And if I say option on the Mac, which is what I'm using, that will be dealt on the PC. So option on the mat Elder when PC? Because I'll be doing this throughout. Once you have your image open, you want to change. You want to extend the canvas about 50%. So and nor do that, hold a command option key and hit C on your keyboard. That will bring up the canvas size where it says inch has changed at 2%. Make sure relative is not checked. And on the height, change that to 150. Now you can make it larger. But for this tutorial, gonna make 150. Hit the top center, Arul, and make sure that the color is black. Click OK, and 40 Shaab has extended canvas about 50%. Our next step is to grab the Wong too, which is W on your key boy and make a selection in the black part of the image. Just click on it and then right, click and select in verse, and that will give you the top selection. We're going to copy that twice. So command or control on a PC Command J twice and you can see in the layers palette. We have two copies. All right, Good. Now our next step, I'm gonna zoom down a little bit. Just make it a little leisure. The next step is to control or command t and we're gonna drag the top of the image all the way down to the bottom. So hold the shift key and just grab the talk and slide it until it snaps to the bottom. Then hit, enter or return on your keyboard Connect. Now we're gonna create what we call it the Displacement Matt. So go to the, um, create new layer icon and click on it and because I foreground is white. If you hold option on your keyboard or else on the article on the PC and hit delete on the keyboard that will fill it with white or your foreground color. Next step is to go to Filter and scroll down to Brenda hit clowns now open levels. And if you hit command L or control L looking up levels and where it says one. Put it in there, too, that lighten it up a little bit like Okay. Next step is to go to Filter Distort 12 and said, You're set it at 200 degrees. Click OK, and then again, we're going to go to Filter Distort six and your settings here are 85 1 of the amount 18 on the ridges and again that's not set in stone. You can experiment with that click OK, and also make sure it's on pond ripples. I forgot to point that out to now. What you want to do is command T or control T and again hold the shift key, and we're going to drag top until it snaps to the bottom of the original image. Down slow there. And then once it's down there, right, click the key and goes down to perspective and grab the corner bottom corner and just drag it until you feel that the ripple is in the right place. I'm even going to drive the topping of a fix on what those ripples in the middle. No one fairly strong. So right about there. Wherever you feel, the ripples look good and then hit the return. Okay, Yeah. Now, if you feel there's too much excess on the bottom, you can always cropped that out. Or you could do that later. That's up to you. Our next step is to go to layer duplicate layer and you'll you have a window come up and right where it says document, click new and type in displacement layer. I'm sorry. Displacement map and then click. Ok, all right. What you've done that you want to command as or control s To save this on your desktop, click on desktop and make sure it's on PSD and hit. Say All right, command W or control W Teoh delayed that and take you right back to your original. All right, so now we want to drag the top layer down two layers and then click on that top layer. Go to filter the store. This place set it to horizontal 85 vertical 8 50 Stretch to fit. Repeat edge picks is click OK, And we'll bring up another window. And on the Death star, select your saved. Displayed displacement, map and opening. Why that now you have a reflection where the ripples If you zoom in a little bit, you can see you can see the ripples. I've been here, and depending on your image will depend on how strong the ripples are. You can sit on the edge of building at all. Okay. You can leave it like that or you can normally on a day like this, like a sunny day with this guy, you get a little bit of ah, bluish tint or in your reflection, and we can create that. But I'm gonna show you how to do that. In the next tutorial. Next tutorial. We're going to create a realistic water reflection effect. And then we'll also give it a little bit of a bluish 10. So have fun creating ripples and reflections in your images. We'll see you next tutorial. 3. How To Create Realistic Water Reflection Effect: Welcome back, everyone. Now with this landscape and this is a dry landscape in the old building. We're going to create a realistic reflection with ripple effects. And it's a fun thing to do. It's about 20. We're going to take about 20 steps a little more involved in the 1st 1 Um, but with practice, you conduce a pretty nice effect with this. Okay, Now, the first thing we want to do is, um, check our whether or not we're in 16 bits or eight bits because one of the tools we're going to use does not work into 16. So go to image mode. And if you're in 16 bits, Dane, change it to eight bits. That way you're being with you is all of the tools that we have to use. Okay, now, when I see command, that means control on a PC. When I say option, that means ELT on a PC. I'm using a Mad Mac. Somebody going to be used, Mac terms to duplicate this layer, Command jack or control J on the PC. Name that layer reflection. All right. Our next step is to bring up the Candace. You could go to image scroll down the campus organ. Go command option C in the inches. Change it. 2%. With his 100 a height. Change it to 200 relative is unchecked. Choose the top center arrow, and then make sure this little block is white. If it's not, click on it and change it toe white by selecting a white click. Ok, All right. I'm gonna assume down a bit here to make it easier. Carrie, our next step. This is going to be our rippled document. I'm sorry. This is our reflection. Yeah, Layer. So now command t for the transformed till okay. And then right. Click on the image and scroll down to flip vertical. Hold the shift key and just move it down to the bottom and Taylor collects in place. All right? Didn't hit return. All right, Now we're going to create a document for our ripples layer command and or control in. We'll bring up the window. The document we want will be at 4000 pixels for with and height 70 to a resolution and in the background contents White, click. Ok, there's our document now for the document. Choose filter noise. Add noise and the setting you want is 65.97. Click OK and go back to blur. Filter, Blur. Gaussian Blur said it at five pixels. We'll need to turn the curves tool now. So command or control Emma and then on the bottom too little Harrell's the left arrow, the black one. Just slide it towards the spike and then choose the right bottom Carol and slight it towards this biking. And it should look something like this Click OK, all right. Next step is to go to your filters filter gallery and in filter galler, you'll see some some folders. Choose the sketch folder and shoes. Bass relief details should be said to smoothness of to light bottom and click. OK, it should look like this. Then go to more filter blur motion blur. Set it at 35 pixels angle at Cyril click. Ok, All right. That's it for this document. So now we would want to do is make a selection of the entire document and then copy it. So command a will make the selection and then command see will copier. Now you could delete this document Command W will deleted. Don't save it don't take you back to your original. Now, that document we just copied, we want to paste in our layer pallet. So Command V is and Victor click. OK, if you get a message, so you should have three. Blair's one of document. One of the reflection upside down and the background layer. Okay, Now selecting your document layer Command T. Okay. And if your document looks like mine, if it's not, um, even with the edges, just hold the shift key movinto one edge and then pull the other edge and then just move it down to the bottom until it snaps. Don't let go the shift key. Grab the top center and just slowly slide it down until it snaps in place. It should be right below your original image. Now you can hit return. Okay, now, our next step, I'm going to zoom down just a little bit. Command t again. And with your cursor on your document, right click and go down to perspective. Then grab the bottom handle and just pull it away. So it should look something like this and then hit return, okay. And then hit command J to duplicate it. So you should have to in your layer pallets. Now go back to the bottom. Previous one right click and deleted and then named this texture the top layer. Okay, Uh, now what we want to do is right. Click on the texture, the lair and hit duplicate layer. Okay. And then where it says document hit new and then name it. Rippled texture. Click. Ok, All right. Uh, now choose image, then select trim. Make sure that transparent pixels is selected and click OK, and that will remove that transparent part of the of that document. Now, we're going to save this document. So commands save or command s control as on the PC, Save it in the desktop, and it should say ripple, texture. Make sure it says dot psd If not, then down here, click on photo shop and then save it. Okay. Now you can delete this particular earlier command W We'll delete it, take you right back to your original. Okay, Now, what we want to do is where you're on your texture layer. Click on the eye on the left to make it invisible and then right click on the reflection layer on hit convert to smart object. There's a reason for that, and you'll see that later. You'll see a little icon come up. Okay. Now with the reflection layers selected, choose filter and then choose filter gallery again. And this time we're going to select Distort folder and select glass and where it says distortion said in 11 smoothness at four and texture on Frosted. Now on next to the texture. There's a little icon right here. Click on it, hit load, texture and the window will come up. Make sure you're on the desktop and right here, where you saved you a ripple texture PSD click on it and hit load and you can see it loaded are ripples. Okay, Very good. Then click. Ok, All right. We're not just done. We got one more step to go here. This is, um, Apple Event. You can see the ripples now to make it look a little more riel. Um, we want to select our texture lair, and then make it visible by clicking on the left eye. Okay, then go to you're blending loan right here as scroll down to soft light. Hey, now, that's a bit strong. So now we go to the opacity of here and bring it down to about 10%. 12%. Right about there. It's 12%. It looks pretty good. Okay? And you can see the difference. And my last step here would be to, um you see, we have, Ah, a little bit of waste over here at the end. We can take some of that out. So with gravity, um, marquee tool and can a marquee What right about my selection right about here and then hit crop image crop. Now take out the waste of area there. And then, uh then de select. There you are. Now, if you remember, we we converted this to a smart object. What that does is lets say you're looking at this image and you say I'd like to make these ripples a little more subtle so you can go back to that original setting by hitting filter gallery here. We'll take you right back, and you might want you if you want to change it, toe from 11 to 7 to make it a little bit more subtle. And you could see it makes changes here. Click OK on. It makes the changes for you and that's that's kind of nice to actually. So there you were, and you can go back and forth any time you want. Teoh. As many times as you want to make whatever change you want, you can experiment with it until you you're quite happy with it. So there's your reflection, and, um, now it's just a matter of making fine tune adjustments. Sometimes I'll make this just a slight tent of blue. There's a way to do that because that's usually what happens in reflections on the blue sky . So what I'd like you to do is to take any minute image at all. You can do this with just about every image you can you have and and try this process. Now I do have attachments. Um, I put up in attachment that you can open and print it if you want and just follow the the instructions on the attachment. So enjoy creating reflections both on his firsthand segment second segment. And, uh, when you do, um, upload your before and after image or just the after image to our our project file so that other people can see it. And, um, well, we welcome as many comets as you want. And don't forget we learn from each other. Thank you again for listening 4. Final Touch: Welcome back. Now that you've created your reflection and assuming you haven't flatten anything yet, um, you're going to want to do, which is optional A last step? Uh, in normal situations, if you have a blue sky like this, you'll have somewhat of, ah, bluish tint to your reflection. And I'm gonna show you how toe include that into your image and, um, again, providing you have been flattened anything. So now first thing you got to do is create a new layer, go down to the icon, create new layer. And then, um, if you option click will first grab your brush and then hold the option key and click on a sample in this guy somewhere. Okay? And you can see your foreground has changed to blue. All right? And if you hold the all option or Elke and then hit the backspace or delete key, that will fill that, uh, layer with blue. Okay, now name it color and move it down just above the reflection layer. Okay, that would be the one that this is the one we had called Reflection. I just removed it. Okay. This is the textured layer, if you remember. Okay. All right. Now you need to clip these two layers together. So hold the option, or Elke, place your cursor between the two layers and click, and that will clip those two layers to get. And what that does is when we make our adjustment here, it'll only effect that pot of the image. Okay, Now hit D on your keyboard to reset the foreground background color to black and white and then hit X to switch him. All right. Next thing we want to do is add a layer mask to the color layer. So good up to layer, layer, mask, reveal all okay. And then select your radiant tool and make sure it's on foreground background. Okay? And then we're going to, um, apply a small Grady int right in the center, on the top. Hold the shift key. So you have a straight line and go down about 1/2 inch or so. All right. You can see it kind of Grady at that part. Then just go to the oap a city, and bring your pastry down to about 12%. Okay? And there you have your bluish tent. Now you can decrease that to a 10% aware of you feel, um, you'd like to have it. That's all there is to it. Very simple to do and that I have that on the attachment as well. So there you want. That's the last step. If you if you decide to include that into the image. Thank you for listening and have fun.