Creating Reflections

[jdbnsn]

Here is a quick and easy way to create reflections of images, text, or whatever as if it were hovering over glass or water. I am going to make an Apevia X-Pleasure case appear as if it were hovering over a lake. I have saved an image of a calm lake and also an image of the case from Apevia's website and opened them in Photoshop.

First step is to select only the image I want without selecting the white background using the magic wand selection tool and clicking on the white background:

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/jdbnsn/reflection/magicwandselect.jpg
http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/jdbnsn/reflection/wandselect.jpg

To change the selection from the white to the case, choose from the menu Select/inverse:


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/jdbnsn/reflection/inverse3.jpg


Next, to remove the shadow from beneath the case I clicked on the Quick Mask Mode and using the Pencil Tool colored in the area at the base with the pink-colored mask.


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/jdbnsn/reflection/quickmask4.jpg
http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/jdbnsn/reflection/penciltool5.jpg


Then I returned to Standard Mode, chose the Move Tool, and dragged the case into my lake image. Then I scaled down the case to the desired size by choosing from the menu Edit/Transform/Scale and dragging the the edges.


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/jdbnsn/reflection/standmode6.jpg
http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/jdbnsn/reflection/movetool7.jpg
http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/jdbnsn/reflection/scale8.jpg


There are lots of different ways to do this, but for this demo I chose to copy the case by right-clicking the layer in the layers window and selecting Duplicate Layer. Then I flipped the image by choosing from the menu Edit/Transform/Flip Vertical. I then dragged it to about where I thought a relfection should be and by moving the slider-bar in the layers window to about 30%.


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/jdbnsn/reflection/layercopy9.jpg
http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/jdbnsn/reflection/flip10.jpg
http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/jdbnsn/reflection/opacity11.jpg


Next, I will skew the image a little to give it some perspective. This is a process of decision-making about where a reflection should extend, and how it should be reflected on the surface. I just chose Edit/Transform/Skew and dragged the base of the image outward a tad.


http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/jdbnsn/reflection/perspect13.jpg

And there it is, a very rough but simple way to make a reflection.

http://www.thebestcasescenario.com/jdbnsn/reflection/calmwater.jpg