Create realistic water reflections

The easy route to amazing images

There are few things in life as relaxing as gazing at calm reflections in a beautiful clear lake. Ahhh, just imagine it. A soft breeze, the sound or water gently lapping against the shore, maybe a distant bird call. Good times! For photographers looking to evoke emotion in their viewers, a nice landscape with water reflections is always a winner. And while not that difficult to photograph, you do obviously need to live near a wondrous wilderness such as the example above.

Or do you…? Well you’ve probably guessed that you don’t. If you have Photoshop, it doesn’t matter if the closest you’ve ever been to a wilderness is the potted plant in your room. As long as you have a photo (use one of the many free photo sites such as Stock.XChng or MorgueFile) and a displacement map, the reflection world is your oyster.

Don’t worry if you have never ventured into the world of displacement maps before – they are very easy to use. They are basically patterned .psd files that when combined with the Displace filter, map an image to that pattern. We’ve included the one used here to get you started.

Step 1: Flip the image

Open up the image you want to apply the reflection to. We are using a photo here, but you can also use a digital painting or illustration. Select the top half, selecting more than 50% vertically. Hit Ctrl/Cmd+J to copy to a new layer. Duplicate this. Go to Edit>Transform>Flip Vertical. Turn Snapping on; move the image down till it snaps into place below the top half. Label each layer – we used ‘Top’ and ‘Bottom’.

Step 2: Add a gradient mask

Switch the top two layers around so the ‘top image’ layer is on top, and ‘bottom’ on the bottom. Hide the background layer. Create a layer mask for the middle (bottom part) layer. Select the black/white linear gradient, hold the Shift key and drag from the bottom of the image edge to the middle of the image. Half the reflection disappears.

Step 3: Borrow the sky colour for the water

Create a Solid Color adjustment layer and sample a lighter colour of the sky. Here, red is 119, green is 127 and blue is 152. Move this layer beneath the bottom image layer and above the background. Select the bottom image layer and click the Lock Transparent Pixels icon at the top of the Layers palette.

Step 4: Displacing water reflections

Go to Filter>Blur>Motion Blur and enter 90 °  for Angle and 75 pixels for Distance (or whatever works for your image). Click the Lock Transparent Pixels icon to uncheck, and Ctrl/Cmd-click the layer’s thumbnail. Before you go to add the displacement map, you need to get one! We’ve supplied one in a zip file, which you can access by clicking here. Once saved to your desktop, unzip the file. Return to Photoshop and go to Filter>Distort>Displace. Enter Horizontal 20 and Vertical 60. Make sure Stretch to Fit and Repeat Edge Pixels are selected. Click OK. Navigate to the ‘WaterDmap.psd’ file and click Open.

Step 5: Final touches

You might need to make a few tonal adjustments to make it all stitch together. Deselect (Ctrl/Cmd+D) and create a Levels adjustment layer above the bottom image layer. Click OK without making any changes. Clip the Levels layer with the layer beneath (Alt/Opt+Ctrl/Cmd+G). Move the left (Highlight) input slider to the right until it reads 233 – and you’re done.