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Adding a reflection can
change the appearance of a surface dramatically. Rather than a
flat, boring surface, you can give the illusion of shine or
polish. And it can be as easy as one-two-three.
We'll start with a photo of a real object on top
of a fake surface. To give the surface the illusion of
reflectivity, we'll reproduce the sides of the book on the blue
surface.
Make a selection of a part of the object that
should appear on the surface. Command-J/Control-J copies that
selection on to its own layer.
Edit> Transform> Distort allows us to reposition
and flip the new layer. (There's no need to make a selection
first. Because the pixels are on a separate layer, Photoshop
will assume that you want all of the layer.) Start by dragging
the top center anchor of the bounding box down past the bottom
center anchor. That flips the "reflection." Next, position the
reflection by dragging corner and side handles. Sometimes it
helps to move the point of transformation (the crosshairs in the
center), but beware of distorting too much.
Press Return/Enter when done. Repeat for any
other parts of the object that need to be reflected. Notice in
the book's spine the thin line. It needs to meet at the point
circled in red.
We'll use Quick Mask mode to help fade the
selection. In the Layers palette, Command-click (Control-click)
on the active layer. Press Q to enter Quick Mask mode. Drag a
black-to-transparent gradient from the base of the reflection
(where the reflection and the object meet) to the other side of
the reflection.
Exit Quick Mask mode (Q again) and hit
Delete/Backspace to clear the selected area. Repeat for any
additional reflection layers. (Note: make sure that you change
the active layer in the Layers palette.)
Once that's done, you can erase any unwanted
areas of reflection. In this case, we want to remove parts of
the reflection that fall off the edge of the surface.
Next we can merge all the reflection
layers into one using the layer palette's menu command Merge
Down. reducing the opacity of the reflection layer allows the
surface to show through, finishing the illusion.
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