How to make water reflections with realistic
ripples in Photoshop
welcome to psdesire photoshop & photography
Youtube Channel.
in this video i will show you how to make
water reflections from scratch, with realistic
reflections and ripples.
For this photoshop tutorial I’ve selected
this barn photograph.
First select marquee tool and click & drag
to make some selection from photograph to
make reflection.
copy and paste it in new layer.
go to edit, transform and select scale. Flip
it vertically, and place it, so it becomes
a mirror image of the original photo.
i need to reposition the two layers to fit
the height and width of the canvas well
rename the layers to identify easily
convert reflection layer to smart object,
so we change any adjustments without destruction
now we add blur to reflection. goto filter
and select motion blur
keep angle 90 degree and distance 11 pixels.
click OK
now we need to Make water ripples for reflection
Open a new 600 x 1000 px RGB Photoshop document.
size doesn't matter but make sure it vertical
size.
fill layer with black
now add noise to the layer. Go to Filter>Noise>Add
Noise, and set the Amount to maximum. click
OK
Next go to Filter>Blur>Gaussian Blur, and
set the Radius to smaller pixels.
Now go to your layers panel and switch to
Channels. Click on the Red layer then go to
Filter>Stylize>Emboss, and set the Angle to
180 with the Height at 1 and the Amount at
maximum.
Do the same again with the Green layer selected,
and the Angle set to 90. with the Height at
1 and the Amount at maximum
Next we want to stretch the lower part of
the image outwards in order to give it the
correct perspective.
Go to Edit>Transform>Perspective and pull
the bottom corners outwards as far as you
can.
You can observe the image looks like colorfull
ripple water waves
You can stretch the lower part more to get
smooth wave effect
Save this as a .psd with maximum compatibility
and close it.
this psd file works as displacement map to
create ripples for our tutorial
name the file water ripples displace map for
easy access
now go Back in your original project file,
Apply the Waves Ripples displace map to reflection
layer
Go to Filter>Distort>Displace and a dialogue
box appears. set the Horizontal Scale to 10,
and the vertical scale to 40. Also select
Stretch to Fit and Repeat Edge Pixels.
When you click okay you will be asked to find
a displacement map and select displace map
.psd image you made earlier.
if you want greater distortion simply click
on filter again and change vertical scale
we successfully created a realistic water
reflection effect
finally To finish off, we’ll make some small
adjustments to the image as a whole. First
we’ll darken the area where the water meets
the land.
Add a new layer, and take gradient tool and
select Reflected Gradient
keep foreground white and drag where the water
meets the land.
invert the layer CTRL + I keyboard shortcut
Change the layer’s blending mode to multiply,
and take it’s Opacity way down to smaller
amount. .
Similarly add a little environment haze at
the top of the reflection. in this image sky
is whiter color so add white gradient
change layer blending mode to screen & reduce
opacity
finally add vibrance adjustment layer and
increase vibrance
add gradient mask to make effect apply only
to top part of the image, not on reflection
here is before & after photographs.
Hope you enjoy this photoshop tutorial on
how to create realistic water reflections.
please Subscribe to download this tutorial
PSD files
Thanks for watching. Don't forget to subscribe
to get updates from our channel we upload
6 videos per week.
post a comment, click thumbs up, like and
share videos with your friends. see you again
in next tutorial.
