Hi, I'm Jesus Ramirez from the Photoshop Training Channel.
In today's tutorial, I'm going to show you how to create a window reflection effect in Photoshop.
You're going to learn a lot about compositing. We'll discuss blending modes, depth of field,
perspective, and the camera raw filter. Let's get right to it.
These are the images that I'm going to work with.
I'll place a link down below in the descriptions, so you download 'em from Adobe Stock if you
want to follow along. The goal here is to make it seem as if there
is a window reflecting the street in front of the women.
You can actually get a very good result right away by selecting the street layer and simply
changing the blending mode from normal to screen.
The name says it all, right? But unfortunately, the composite is not complete.
It still needs a whole lot of work. We still need to work with the smaller details,
a lot of the things that most people don't worry about.
Things like the amount of reflection, depth of field and perspective.
Let's start with the reflection on the window first.
The Screen Blending mode uses the luminosity of the layer to create the blend.
It makes black pixels invisible and the darker a pixel is, the more transparent it becomes.
So, if you adjust the brightness of a layer, you adjust the blend.
Go to the Adjustment Layer icon and select either Curves or Levels.
I'll select Levels, since it's easier for beginners to understand.
And I'm going to clip the layer to the Street layer by clicking on this icon.
This simply means that when I adjust the image, it will only adjust the Street layer and not
the layer below. So let me click on that.
Then you can control how the layer below blends by adjusting the luminosity.
Click on the Black Point and drag it to the right to make more pixels darker, which makes
'em less visible, or you can click on the White Point and drag that to the left to make
more pixels brighter, which makes them more visible.
In this case, what you probably want to do is click on this point here, which determines
how bright the brightest pixel of the image is.
So, I'm just going to drag it to the left, so that the brightest pixel is no longer white.
It's now this shade of gray and the layer is more transparent.
And the reason that this is happening, is because the Street layer is set to Screen.
The Screen Blending mode makes dark pixels invisible and bright pixels visible.
So, when we adjust the luminosity of the layer, we also change how it blends.
So, in this case, we've made the brightest pixels a little darker, therefore they become
more transparent. So, you can drag on this point to control
the amount of reflection. And then you can adjust these points to control
the contrast and how they blend with the layer below.
And even though we have a great reflection, the image still doesn't look right.
And the reason is that we haven't taken a lot of things into consideration for this
composite, so let me show you what I mean by that.
If I bring back that Street layer and set it to normal, you'll notice that this image
does not have the same depth of field as the image of the women having lunch.
Notice how, basically, the only thing in focus is this woman here, the one sticking her tongue
out at us, and everything else is somewhat blurry.
And in the street image, everything that's in focus is in the background, so this is
not going to match. But we can easily fix it by applying a filter.
Go into Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur and adjust the blur accordingly.
About four pixels will work in this case, and I'll press Okay.
So that fixes that issue.
But we have another problem, which is the perspective in the scene.
Remember, this is a composite, and the perspective of all that elements in the scene have to
match in order for the composite to look realistic. If you don't what I mean by perspective, then
don't worry, I have a video that explains it all.
I'll place a link right below in the description. But for now, I'll give you a brief explanation.
No matter what kind of composite you have, you will have a ground plane where an object
or a person stands on. Where the ground plane meets the sky, that's
where you'll have the horizon line for the scene.
Any object that you place must have the same perspective.
You can find the perspective by drawing parallel converging lines on your object or background.
Where these lines meet, that's where you will have the vanishing point.
And the vanishing point sits on the horizon line, so that's how you can find it.
That's why this cube looks like it's really sitting on that ground.
But if I randomly place a cube,
it will no longer look realistic.
So, I will need to find the vanishing point of this cube,
and place it accordingly,
so that the vanishing point sits on the horizon line of the composite.
Obviously, perspective is way more complex than this,
but even with this minimum understanding of it, you will be far more advanced than most people.
For this project we need to make sure that the horizon line for both images matches.
Let me show you how to do that.
Click on the Background layer
and select the Line tool.
Then I'm going to look for parallel converging
lines in my image and I'm going to follow them and see where they meet.
So, I'm' going to click here and drag along this parallel converging line, all the way
off to the end here. Then hold the space bar and pan back to the
center of the image, and look for another parallel converging line.
We can use the line that the yellow seats make in the background.
So, click and drag and follow that line, all the way, until it meets the previous line.
I'll go back into the Layers panel, hold shift, and click on both layers to select them so
that I can see 'em at the same time. And where these two lines meet, that is where
the vanishing point is. And the vanishing point lays on the horizon
line. And that is very important.
So, what I'm going to do now is create another line from this vanishing point,
going across to the other side, so that I could know exactly where the horizon line
for this image is. And I do want to mention that the reason that
I'm able to hold the space bar and click and drag to pan and go off frame like so,
it's because I have an option that is not usually enabled by default.
It's called Overscroll, and the way to enable that is by pressing Ctrl K on Windows, Command
K on the Mac. Then, in the preferences panel, under Tools,
make sure that you enable Overscroll,
otherwise you won't be able to do that.
But anyway.
Now that I know where my horizon line is,
I can use this line as a guide. You can now delete the other two layers if
you like, we don't need 'em anymore. You can delete them by pressing the backspace
key on Windows, or the delete key on the Mac.
Next, I'm going to enable the Street Layer. And I need to make sure that that line is
above that street layer so that I can see it.
Next you have to find the horizon line for the Street layer and start by analyzing the
image. Look for parallel converging lines.
I think that the lines here in the street will work, so we can start there.
Click and drag a line that follows that line all the way to the other side, then hold the
space bar and pan back to your image. And I think we can use the lines on the building
here, so I'm going to click and drag this line to the other side until it meets the
previous line. So, this is where the vanishing point is,
right above this guy's head. The vanishing point lays on the horizon line.
So, let me draw a line that will represent the horizon line for this image.
Next, I'm going to delete the layers that we don't need.
And it looks like I created two lines in the same layer, and that's okay, no worries.
I'll double click on the Hand Tool to fit the image to screen, and I want you to pay
attention to the two lines that represent the horizon line.
Clearly, they don't match, and that's why the composite was looking off.
What we need to do, is we need to make these two images have matching horizon lines.
And that's what we're going to work on next.
You have to keep in mind where the horizon lines are.
Just remember that the horizon line for the street image is right above this guy's head.
That's going to be really important. Next, I'll delete the other two shape layers,
because we don't need them. The only important shape layer is the horizon
line for the image of the women having lunch.
To match the horizon lines first, select the Street layer and enable the Move Tool from
the Tool bar, and click and drag the street layer up, so that the red line, which indicates
the horizon line of the background image is right above this guy's head.
And that will make it so that the horizon lines match and that the image is in perspective.
Then you can push Ctrl T/Command T to transform, press okay, and click and drag this Pivot
Point to that line. If you don't see that Pivot Point, you can
enable it by clicking it on this check box. Then hold Alt on Windows, Option on the Mac,
and click and drag to scale. Depending on your settings, you may need to
hold shift to keep them as [constrain] and just make sure that the image fills the screen
like so. And you can click on check mark to commit
the changes. Then I'll double click on the Hand Tool to
fit the image to screen. And I can just delete this Shape number three
now, because I don't need it anymore. Everything is in perspective.
I'm going to then, change the Blending mode back to Screen, and enable this layer, and
the image is much better. Everything is in perspective.
At this point, all you need to do is make any adjustments to the blend.
And once you're happy with that, what you can do is select the layer on top, hold shift,
click on the layer on bottom, just like them all, then right click and convert it into
a Smart Object. Then, go into Filter>Camera, Raw Filter and
you can apply some final effects. For example, you can adjust the overall exposure
of the image and you can also go into the Split Toning tab and add a green tone to the
window to make it a little more realistic. So, I'm going to click and drag this hue lighter
over to the greens and I'm going to increase the saturation.
You don't want to go too far, obviously. You're going to have to fine tune it accordingly,
just to get a slight green tint on that window reflection.
Then go into the FX icon and add a little bit of Grain.
And the reason that you want to do that is because in areas that you blur the image,
the pixels are going to look too smooth. That, to me, looks very digital.
So, I like to add just a little bit of Grain so that it doesn't look so smooth and it looks
more realistic.
Then I'm going to right click and select Fit in View and I'm also going to adjust the Amount
slighter, to add a Vignette to my image. And I'm going to go pretty far,
but I'm also going to increase the Highlights, so that the Highlights,
like in this area, they pop through and they're not hidden by the Vignette.
And actually, that Vignette's a little strong, so I'm just going to minimize it a little bit.
Next, I'm going to press OK.
And this is our result. If you need to make an edit, you can double click on the Smart Object to open it up in
a new tab and make an adjustment. Once you apply your adjustment, you can close
the tab and save it. And the Smart Object will automatically update
the contents and it will apply the Camera Raw Filter to it.
And let me know down in the comments below if you found this tutorial useful.
If you enjoyed it, don't forget to click on that like button and share it with a friend.
Also, if this is your first time at the Photoshop Training Channel,
then don't forget to click on that Subscribe and Notification button,
so that you don't miss any new Photoshop tutorials. Thank you so much for watching.
I'll talk to you again in the next video.