How To Create Easy Reflections In Photoshop (Or Any Image Editor)

You’ve probably seen text, product shots and other kinds of images with reflections since it’s become a fairly popular effect. It’s really easy to do in Photoshop, or pretty much any image editor (even a web-based one). Here’s how to do it.

The video above will give you the full rundown, but here are the steps involved:

  • Take the image you want to reflect and copy the bottom half of it, then paste that into a new layer.
  • Line up the pasted layer with the layer of the object you want to reflect, then flip the paste layer vertically. In Photoshop, you can do this by pressing Command+T (Control+T on Windows), right-clicking on the pasted image, and choosing Flip Vertical.
  • With your pasted image flipped, line up the top part of it with the bottom part of the image you want to reflect. At this point it should already look like its reflecting, but not very realistically.
  • Grab the eraser tool and make sure the brush has a hardness of 0. Set the brush size to about the height of the reflection layer. Place the eraser about half-way down the reflection and all the way to the left. Hold down shift to ensure your line will be straight, then click and drag the erase all the way to the other end of the canvas. This will make the reflection fade out into the background.
  • Finally, reduce the reflection layer’s opacity so it’s not quite as intense as the real object.

That’s all, you’re done! For more Photoshop tips, tricks, and how-tos, check out our Photoshop tag page. If you’re new to Photoshop, check out our Basics of Photoshop Lessons to learn how to use it.


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