Reflections

Hey there, today we're here for a very short but yet again effective tutorial.

Undoubtedly you've seen images with reflections under them whilst surfing the web, well if you didn't know how to do them and are looking for for an effective and easy way, then you've come to the right place! Let's get started.

For the purpose of the tutorial, i created some text that i will use to present the reflection. You can type in some text for the tutorial, or you can go ahead and use an image you need to reflect.

So if you've got something you need to reflect, and it's made of several layers, make sure to merge them it'll make your life easier when creating the reflection.

So duplicate the image you'd like to reflect. (Ctrl+J) and name this layer "reflection". Now go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical.

Select your Move Tool, and nudge down your duplicated image until it is directly below the original. (Hold shift and press the down arrow on your keyboard to nudge the image down 10 pixels each time)
This is what you need to have.

Important Note: It can be difficult to create reflections if the bottom of your image/text is not flat. I avoid creating reflections for such images. Take a look at these examples to see why you would not get realistic reflections. The reflection of the "tail" of the Y and G are not where they should be (1), but if we nudge it down to where it should be (2), the reflection for the rest of the letters is not correct either. I recommend avoiding reflections for such images.

Now this is a step which a few people neglect, they just lower the opacity of the reflection layer, but it's not good enough in my opinion. So create a layer mask by clicking the layer mask icon in the layer palette.

Grab your gradient tool, set your foreground colour to black and use these settings.

Now click the white box (the layer mask) in the layer palette to select it. Now with your gradient tool, while holding shift, click near the bottom of the reflection layer and drag your gradient up. This will fade out the bottom of the reflection.

You might need to give it a few goes to see how much you want to take off.

Here is what i ended up with.

You can lower the opacity of the layer too if you feel the reflection is too bright.

That's it! You have a neat reflection which you can re create in a few steps on an image of your choice!

Optional Step

Now this step is entirely optional as you already have your reflection, this will just add a little touch of realism.

Duplicate your original layer and name it shadow. Now give your image a subtle shadow, i used these settings, mess around to get a something you like. But make sure you keep the angle at 90 Degrees.

Now add a layer mask to your shadow layer, grab your brush tool. Use a smooth brush, the size depends on the size of your image. I used brush size 17px as i was comfortable with this size for my text.

What we're basically going to do is erase the shadow from around the sides of the image we don't want. You only want shadow at the bottom of the image, where it is touching with the reflection. Take a look at these two pictures to see what i erased.

And that's it! I hope you enjoyed the tutorial and that it'll come in useful for you! See ya!