Hi. This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV.
I'm going to show you how to create the look of a gentle, rippling reflection on a clear, calm lake or pond.
This is an update of a tutorial I did many years ago on a much earlier version of Photoshop.
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Open a scenic photo that would look great bordering a lake.
I downloaded this one from Shutterstock.
The first step is to crop it.
Open your Crop Tool and click the "Clear" button.
This will clear out the Width, Height and Resolution.
In the resolution field, type in 150 for its pixels per inch.
By leaving the Width and Height empty, it'll allow us to crop our image without confining
us to a particular height and width.
Drag the anchor points in or out.
The bottom edge will determine where our image will end and where the lake begins.
Once you're happy with its cropping, make sure Delete Cropped Pixels is checked and click the checkmark.
Go to Image and Canvas Size.
Click the top, middle anchor, which will add space directly below our photo.
Change the measurement to "percent" and for its Height, type in 200.
The "extension color" is irrelevant in this case.
To see our entire document, press Ctrl or Cmd and the minus key.
Go to View and "New Guide".
Tick "Horizontal" and for its position, type in 50%.
Then, click OK or press Enter or Return.
Go back to View and if "Snap" isn't checked, click it to activate it.
Open your Rectangular Marquee Tool and drag it over your photo making sure it snaps to
the guideline on the opposite corner.
Press Ctrl or Cmd + J twice.
This cuts and copies our photo twice.
Click the lock icon of the background to unlock it and press the "Delete" key, since we don't need it anymore.
Press Ctrl or Cmd + T to open your Transform Tool and go to the top, middle anchor point.
Press and hold the Shift key as you drag it to the bottom until it snaps in place.
Then, press Enter or Return.
Hide the guideline by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + H. At this magnification, you may see a
little horizontal space in the middle, but there' actually no space at all.
We can prove this by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + 1 to see our document at 100% magnification.
Notice, there's no space.
Fit it back on your screen by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + 0 or zoom out in increments by pressing
Ctrl or Cmd and the minus key a few times.
Make the top layer active and click the New Layer icon to make a new layer above it.
In this layer, we'll create our displacement map, which will give our reflection a rippled look.
First, we'll fill the empty layer with white.
If your foreground and background colors aren't black and white, respectively, press "D" on your keyboard.
Since white is our background color, press Ctrl or Cmd + Delete.
Go to Filter, Render and Clouds.
Open "Levels" by pressing Ctrl or Cmd + L. make the Input Midtones: 2.
We'll convert it into a Smart Object, so we can modify it non-destructively.
Click the icon at the upper, right and click "Convert to Smart Object".
Go to Filter, Distort and Twirl.
Make the Angle 200 degrees.
Go back to Filter, Distort and "ZigZag".
The Style is "Pond Ripples", the Amount is 85 and the Ridges is 18.
Go back to Filter, Blur and Gaussian Blur.
Blur it 2 pixels.
Convert it into another Smart Object and open your Transform Tool.
Go to the top, middle anchor and press and hold the Shift key as you drag it down until
it snaps to the middle of your document.
Then, press Enter or Return.
We're going to stretch out the bottom of our displacement map to make it look in perspective with the land above it.
First, let's zoom out by pressing Ctrl or Cmd and the minus key a few times
Open your Transform Tool and go to a bottom corner.
Press and hold Alt +Ctrl +Shift on Windows or Option +Cmd +Shift on a Mac
the corner out approximately this much.
Go to the bottom, middle anchor and press and hold the Shift key as you drag the bottom up to about here.
Then, press Enter or Return and zoom back in.
Now that we have our displacement map positioned and placed in perspective and are happy with it,
we need to rasterize it so we can crop off the areas that extend beyond our visible document.
If we don t crop it off to the measurements of our reflection, the ripple effect won't look correct.
Right-click or secondary-click on an empty area of the layer and click Rasterize Layer.
Press Ctrl or Cmd + A to make a selection of our visible document and go to Image and Crop.
Then, deselect it.
Alt or Option-click the eyeball icon next to our displacement map layer to hide the other two layers.
Click the icon at the upper, right and click Duplicate Layer.
Open the Document list and click New . Name it Displacement Map and click OK.
Notice, it created a new document of the same name.
Go to File and Save As . Save it to your Desktop as a Photoshop PSD file and click Save.
If you see this message, just click OK.
Now that we saved it, we an close the file.
Alt or Option-click the eyeball again to make the other two layers visible.
Click off the eyeball next to the displacement map to hide it and make the reflection layer active.
We re going to affect the reflection with filters, so to do it non-destructively, convert it into a Smart Object.
Go to Filter, Distort and Displace.
Make the Horizontal Scale: 10 and the Vertical Scale: 150.
Tick Stretch to Fit and Repeat Edge Pixels.
Click the Displacement Map PSD file and click Open.
Next, we ll gradually darken the water under the land.
Make a new layer above the reflection.
Open your Gradient Tool and the Gradient Picker.
Click the black to transparent thumbnail and make sure the Linear gradient icon is active.
Place your cursor approximately this much above the reflection and press and hold the
Shift key as you drag the tool down approximately this much and release.
Reduce its opacity to 50%.
Next, we ll give our water reflection a cooling color cast.
Click the Adjustment Layer icon and click Photo Filter.
Open the Filter list.
I ll click Cooling Filter (82) , but feel free to try other cooling filters for your reflection.
I ll make its Density: 20%.
Make sure Preserve Luminosity is checked.
To finish our image, we ll remove the sharp delineation between the land and the water
and then crop off the excess of the reflection below the rippled effect.
Make the Land layer active.
Above it, we ll make a composite snapshot of our image by pressing Alt + Ctrl + Shift
+ E on Windows or Option + Cmd + Shift + E on a Mac.
Open your Blur Tool and Blur Picker.
Make the size 15 or 20 pixels, the Hardness: 0% and the Strength: 100%.
Place your cursor just outside your image between the land and the water.
Press and hold the Shift key as you drag the Blur Tool to the opposite side.
Pressing Shift kept the tool perfectly horizontal.
Open your Rectangular Marquee Tool and drag it over your image.
Below it will be cropped off.
Go to Image and Crop.
Then, deselect it and zoom back in.
This is Marty from Blue Lightning TV. Thanks for watching!