Reflective Environment

1. Create new document in Photoshop (mine is 300x250), Fill it with a color of your choice:

2. Now lets add some text to it. I am going to use GreyCobra as an example:

3. We want to make it appear as if the word GreyCobra is reflecting off a surface below it. To do this, we are going to make it appear as if there is a separate surface underneath our text. Make a selection with your selection tool that looks like this:

4. Now choose 2 lighter shades of your background color, make a new layer, and fill your selection (have the lightest of your two colors be at the top of the gradient, and the darker of the two colors at the bottom. Both colors should be lighter than your background:

5. This does not look much like a surface yet, but once we add some effects to it, it will appear more realistic. Duplicate your text layer and drag it above the surface layer. Now drag it below your current text layer over the surface:

6. Go to Edit > Transform > Flip Vertical:

7. Now rasterize your later (layer > rasterize > layer). Go to edit > Transform > Scale. A box will appear around your text:

8. Drag the lower center box downwards until you get to about here:

9. Click enter to apply changes. Now go to edit > transform > Perspective:

10. Another box will appear around your text. Drag the lower left or right box to the left or right to make it appear as if your text is larger at the bottom:

11. Now what? Now we need to make it appear as if this text is fading out. To do this, get your eraser tool out, and select a larger brush (200-300) with 0% hardness. Now begin brushing a little below the actual text:

12. Simple enough. Keep doing this until you have results you are happy with. When you are done erasing, get your blur tool out and select a large brush again. We want it to appear as if as the text gets closer to us, it is more blurry, so only brush the bottom!

13. Try adding an outer glow to make it appear as if the reflection is coming off the glow! Add the same glow to both text layers:

14. Keep playing around with different settings until your get a result you like!

Without a surface

With a surface

With a surface, and some dodge highligting

With surface, dodge brushing, and the reflection text set to overlay.

Good luck!