Hi. Welcome back to the photoshoptrainingchannel.com.
I'm Jesus Ramirez.
In this video, I'm going to show you how to apply a reflection to a composite in Photoshop.
We're going to use the microphone and headphone composite that we used in a previous tutorial.
The link to that tutorial is in the description in case you want to follow along with that
one as well.
And, we're going to apply the reflection of the wood and table to the microphone.
To apply a realistic reflection in a composite, it's always a good idea to use a real-world
reference.
But in this tutorial, I'm going to show you how you can easily create a reference image digitally.
That means that we're going to use a piece of software to generate the image.
And we're going to use Adobe Dimension.
This step is not necessary to follow along, so you can skip that part if you like.
I'm going to place a link to a downloadable file in the description so that you can follow
step-by-step with this tutorial.
Okay. Let's get started.
This is the document that we're going to work with.
This is pretty much where we left off in the previous tutorial.
If you haven't followed the previous tutorial, I'll place a link down below in the description
so that you can click on it and get to the spot.
But, even if you haven't watched that tutorial, the techniques that you will learn in this
tutorial will be very beneficial.
So, let's get right to it. What we want to do in this video is match
the reflection of the table onto the reflective surface of the microphone.
And the biggest challenge is, how can we make this a realistic reflection? It will be very
difficult for me to simply select the background and make a selection with the marquee tool,
and then use the content of the selection to apply the reflection, because I'm not really
sure how the reflection will actually work in the real world.
So it's important to always have real-world examples.
One thing that you can do is find an object that has the shape of the handle of the microphone
and that also has a reflective surface, and place it on top of a wooden table, and see
how the reflection behaves. But what I'm going to do in this tutorial
is use a digital reference. And we're going to use Adobe Dimension for that.
So first, let me open up Adobe Dimension.
If you don't have Adobe Dimension, don't worry. This step is not necessary for the tutorial.
Like I said, you can use a real-world example, but I'm going to use a digital example just
as a reference. This will only be a reference.
So what I did here is I created this simple 3D scene where we have this metal rod and
a similar surface to the table, and I'm going to see how it reflects on the rod.
And all I need to do is really click on the render button, and just see how the surface behaves.
Now, to set this up, it's actually quite simple. What I'm going to do is I'm just simply going
to create a new document and I'm going to select a plane.
And by the way, if you want to learn about Adobe Dimension and how it works, I have a
free course here on YouTube. I'll place a link to it down below in the description.
With the scale tool selected, I'm going to click and drag and hold shift, and create
a plane. Then I'm going to use a rounded cylinder,
and I'm going to hold shift, click and drag to scale that down.
And then without holding shift, I'm going to click and drag up to create the metal rod.
This is going to create the objects that are going to help create the reference.
What I need to do now is click on the materials and I have a reflective material called metal.
I'm going to click and drag it onto the rod so that it reflects the surface, and then
I'm going to use a metal material that I have in libraries panel.
Then, I'm going to select this material that I have here that looks a lot like the wooden
table that we used in the composite. And the only thing I need to do now is just
match the camera angle to something that's similar.
It doesn't have to be perfect to my composite.
So I can just click and drag and move that right about there, and click on the metal
rod and rotate it accordingly so that it matches the angle of the microphone.
It doesn't have to be perfect. It just needs to be close enough.
So I'm not going to spend too much time fine-tuning all the details.
I already have a file that I've set up for the reflection.
I'm not going to save this, and we're just going to use this example here, which is very
similar to what I have in the composite. I'm going to click on this icon just to see
the render view, and I'm going to expand it and this is what we're going to use.
And notice one thing. Notice how that line bends on the rod.
And also notice that we only see about half of the table on the reflection, and the rest
of that will be whatever the ceiling is in our scene.
So that's really important to note if we want to create a realistic composite.
So I'm going to use that reference and work with that in Photoshop.
So what I'm going to do is select the rectangular marquee tool, and with the rectangular marquee
tool selected, I'm just going to make a selection out of the pixels in this area that are the
pixels that are going to reflect on that microphone.
So I'll select the background and I'll press Ctrl J, Command J on the Mac, to duplicate
those pixels, and I'm going to click and drag that layer to the top of the layer stack.
I'm going to rename this layer reflection.
Then, I'll right click and select convert to smart object.
A smart object is simply a container where we can place one or multiple layers and we
can apply transformations, filters, and adjustments non-destructively, which means that we can
always come back and edit them later.
Then, I'm going to press Ctrl T, command T, to transform.
And I'm going to reduce the opacity to 35% so that we can see the original background
and I can make my adjustments accordingly.
So, one thing that I need to do is rotate the layer like so, and then I'm going to right
click and select flip horizontal. And the reason I'm doing so is because the
lines on the reflection are almost horizontal.
If you look at the reference image, you can see that we have these horizontal lines.
So they start here where the plank starts, and they just go almost horizontally.
See that?
So I'm going to try to duplicate that in the composite.
So I'm just going to scale this down a bit and maybe drag it up.
Then, I'm going to right click and select warp.
That'll give me access to the warp handles, but I'm going to use a preset.
I'm going to use the arch preset. And that creates that effect you see there.
If you get an opposite effect, like maybe something like that where it doesn't match
the microphone, what you need to do is click on this icon here, which changes the warp
orientation and finds something that looks similar to the shape of your microphone or
whatever object you're using. And then you can adjust the bend accordingly.
You can go into negative values if you need to.
In this case, positive values work. And you could also adjust their horizontal
distortion or the vertical distortion. I'll adjust the vertical distortion just a
little bit. And I'm going to right click and select scale.
And scale that in like so.
And what I'm going to do now is right click and select warp once again, and we get the
same warp we had before. The arch.
And this is a trick that not a lot of people know.
When you have one of these presets selected, if you select custom, watch what happens.
The handles come in and you can continue adjusting the distortion with these handles.
So now, I'm just going to try to match the lines here and try to get something that looks
similar to my reference image. So something like that.
And again, I'm not going to be perfect, and that's not the point.
The point is is now I have an idea of more or less how the reflection would look.
So even if I don't get it perfect but I follow it just enough, it's going to create a more
realistic composite than just coming out with something from your head that is not based
on reality. So you can see how this works here.
So just fine-tune it accordingly, and just make sure that the entire microphone is covered,
or at least the bottom part, because remember, the top part is the ceiling.
So, again, in the sample image, we would only cover about half the microphone, and the top
part will not be covered by the table texture. In this case, we have the headphones covering
the mid-point, so that's all we'd really need to worry about.
And I'm also going to try to align these smaller lines here, because that's more or less how
it would work in reality. And this step requires a lot of fine-tuning.
You're going to have to decide when you think it looks real enough.
In this case, I don't want to spend too much time fine-tuning these smaller details.
I just want you to be aware of them. Now that I have the layer more or less where
I want it, I'm going to click on this check mark to commit the changes, and I'm going
to bring up the opacity to 100%, and that is my distortion.
What I'm going to do now is hold alt, option on the Mac, and click on the layer mask icon
to create a black layer mask, which hides everything in the layer.
Then, I'm going to click on the zoom tool and I'm going to zoom in, and I'm simply going
to select the brush tool. I have a pretty large brush so I'm going to
reduce the size and bring down the hardness just a little bit.
And I'll just paint with white to reveal the reflection in the areas that I want to reveal
them. White is currently my foreground color.
Here it is. And I'll make this brush size even smaller,
and I can just start painting with white.
So I'm just going to paint fairly quickly here, and I don't want to spend too much time
on this in the video. So what I'll do is I'll pause, and I'll come
back to you when I'm done. But all I'm going to do is just paint with
white in the areas where I want to see the reflection.
Okay, I'm back. I finished making my layer mask.
And you can see what I did there. The next step is to actually blend the layer
mask to the microphone, and you can select a number of blending modes that will work
with that. A blending mode is simply a mathematical equation
that blends layers together. One of the blending modes that I think will
work great in this case is multiply. And I can bring down the opacity accordingly.
Then I'll double click on the hand tool to fit the image to screen, and you can see what
that looks like. And you can adjust the opacity just to try
to match the intensity that that shadow should have.
And I just want to point out that my mask is not perfect.
I went fairly quickly even though I paused the video.
Just like in any other composite, these small tiny l- little details is what you got to
worry about after you put in the main elements together.
So this is how I usually work. I don't worry about any of these tiny little
details until I know for sure that I'm going to need them, because in some cases, if you
work on small details first, you may end up not needing the mask, or the small details
really don't matter because they get hidden by other elements of the composite.
So work on these tiny little details at the very end.
Just make sure that the overall composite works before you focus on the smaller details.
So once again, I'll double click on the hand tool and we have the reflection on the handle.
Now, I just noticed one thing that I wasn't paying attention to.
And I'm actually sort of glad it happened because I get to show you the power of working
non-destructively. So this is the layer where we applied that
effect, right? And I'm noticing that this dark line is not matching with the dark line
here at the bottom, which is where it should be.
So, if I wanted to continue distorting the layer, I can press control T, command T, to
transform, but right now it's not going to work.
I'm going to press, and Photoshop's going to tell me, nope, you cannot do that.
And the reason you cannot do that is because we have this chain link icon with the layer
mask. So I can't transform both of these at the
same time. So I'm just going to unlink it and then click
on the smart object and press control T, command T, to transform, then select warp, and I can
continue warping it. So I can just move that black line right about
there. And I can continue distorting the layer.
I'll click on the check mark and I've made that correction.
The next thing that I'm going to work on is the actual microphone, and this is actually
a lot easier to do. I don't need a reference for that.
I think I can fake it just by making a selection of this part of the image, pressing control
J, command J on the Mac, and jump that into a new layer.
Place that above the microphone image, and press control alt G, command option G on the
Mac, to create a clipping mask, which means that the layer below controls the visibility
of the layer on top.
Then I'm going to click on the move tool and click and drag to place that right about here.
And then control T, command T, to transform, and drag this down and this up.
And I'm going to right click and select warp, and I'm just going to warp this like so.
It doesn't have to be perfect 'cause it's just going to create a pretty cool effect
and you'll see why in a moment.
With that layer active, all I need to do now is go into filter, blur, Gaussian blur, and
this window comes up, and you can adjust the blur.
I'm just going to adjust the blur so that we lose all the details, but we still have
some of that larger shapes. And I'll press OK, and all I'm going to do
now is change the blending mode to either overlay or soft light, whichever one you think
works best in your case. In this case, I think I'll go with overlay
just so that it's more noticeable. And I'm going to create a layer mask and I'm
just going to paint with black in areas where I don't want to see that effect.
So I'm going to increase the size of my brush by tapping on the right bracket key of the
keyboard, and I'm just going to paint away the areas that I don't want to apply that
reflection effect, like so. And now we have the before and the after.
There's only one more thing that we need to do to make this into a more realistic composite,
and this is a technique that you've seen in a previous video, which is a video on color
matching in Photoshop. It's one of my 90 second Photoshop tips.
If you haven't seen it, I'll place a link right below in the description so that you
can use it as reference for your future projects. But I'll show it again in this tutorial.
So I'm going to click on the microphone layer and I'm going to click on the new adjustment
layer icon, and select curves. Then, I'm going to click on the Curves thumbnail
so that the focus, the white outline, is on the thumbnail.
Then, I'm going to hold alt on Windows, option on the Mac, and click on auto to see the auto
color correction options, which includes the algorithm that Photoshop can use for an auto
color correction.
The algorithm that I'm going to select is find dark and light colors, and I'm going
to uncheck snap neutral midtones. And under shadows, I'm just going to select
the color of the shadows of the image. So I'll click in between the panels here.
So it's a dark brown. I'll press OK.
Then I'll select the highlight color. So I'll select the brightest possible point
here on the panel of wood, and I think that's a little too dark, so I'm just going to drag
it up to make it brighter and press OK. So that applies a color effect to that image.
So we're matching the ambient colors, so it looks more realistic.
I'll press OK. Photoshop will ask me if I want to use these
as default colors. Usually the answer is no, so I'll click on
no. And I'll click and drag down so that we can
see the Curves Adjustment Layer. Notice the color matching that we did there.
The only thing that we need to worry about now is contrast, so I'm going to click and
drag this point down, and maybe click and drag this up to give this image more contrast,
and we have a much more realistic composite.
You can always click on the Curves Adjustment Layer.
Maybe reduce the opacity a little bit if you want to bring back some of those original
colors. The choice is up to you.
In this case, I think that maybe at about 75% we'll get a good result.
And of course, we can keep fine-tuning this all day, but there is no need to do that.
So this is how you would get a realistic reflection in Photoshop.
Obviously, I'm still missing the ceiling part, but one thing that you can do is maybe copy
the pixels of one of these areas and do that process again right on that top part.
I don't think it's necessary for this tutorial. We've gone a little too long already, but
I hope that you've enjoyed the techniques.
If you have any comments or questions, please leave them down below.
I think we've done a good job so far. Of course, the composite is not finished,
and it could use more work. For example, in the headphones.
But I think that you get the idea of how you could add those reflections.
And one more thing. Do me a favor and click on that like button
now if you enjoyed either of the techniques. Also, if this is your first time at the Photoshop
Training Channel, don't forget to click on that subscribe and notification button.
Thank you so much for watching. I will talk to you again in the next tutorial.