Water Reflection in Photoshop

Overview:

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

2) Select the Rectangular Marque Tool from the left menu




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



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)

 

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)

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

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



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

9) Select Layer from the top menu and then Duplicate Layer

Select Document: New and provide a name to be Lines

Hit OK

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

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

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

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

14) Your image is now wavy

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

16) Thanks for following this water reflection tutorial!

 

Author: TheDude