Water Reflection in Photoshop


Overview:
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Water reflection effect is a very cool and easy achievable Photoshop trick you would learn from this tutorial. The way to do it is to create a wavy reflection image that imitates water distortion. This tutorial was made using Photoshop CS5.


1) Start with opening an image where you want to add the water reflection effect

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2) Select the Rectangular Marque Tool from the left menu

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3) Mark the part of the image that you want to be reflected (see the image below)
Press Ctrl + J to create a new layer from your selection

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4) Hit Ctrl + T to open the free transform mode
In the top bar that just appeared, change the vertical value to -100% (see image)

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5) Hit Enter to confirm changes
Hit Ctrl + D to deselect you selection
Hit V to select the Selection Tool and move the new layer precisely to the bottom of the original image so they can touch each other (see image below)

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6) Next step is to create a new layer
Hit D and then X to change the foreground colour to be white
Hit Alt + Delete to completely fill the new layer with white colour

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7) Select Filter > Sketch from the top menu and then Halftone Pattern
A window will appear, so change the Size = 7, Contrast = 50 and also choose Line as a Pattern Type
Hit OK

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8) Select Filter > Blur from the top menu and then Gaussian Blur
Change Radius to 4 pixels and hit OK

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9) Select Layer from the top menu and then Duplicate Layer
Select Document: New and provide a name to be Lines
Hit OK

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10) In this step we save the document that will be needed to make the reflection look wavy. Hit together SHIFT + CTRL + S

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11) Please go back to your original document file and get rid of the lines layer by deleting it (see image below)

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12) Hit together Alt + Ctrl + Shift + E to create a new layer having all existing layers merged
Make sure you end up with layers order like on the image below

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13) Select Filter > Distort from the top menu and then Displace
A window will appear, so change Horizontal Scale = 4 and Vertical Scale = 0
Check Stretch To Fit and Repeat Edge Pixels and hit OK.  A new window will appear so select the document file we saved in the step 10 called Lines.psd

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14) Your image is now wavy

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15) Select Rectangular Marque Tool from the left menu. Mark a selection to exactly where the reflection starts (see image below)
Hit Delete to get rid of the selection

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16) Thanks for following this water reflection tutorial!

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