Photoshop Tutorials: Add A Realistic Water Reflection

Step 15: Apply The "Gaussian Blur" Filter To The Layer Mask

Before we add our finishing touch by colorizing the water , let's soften the edge of the layer mask a little so there isn't such a harsh dividing line between the image on top and the water below. We'll use the Gaussian Blur filter for that, and since we want to apply it to the layer mask, we'll need to first select the mask. We can do that by clicking on the layer mask thumbnail in the Layers palette:

You can tell that the layer mask is now selected by the white highlight box around its thumbnail. We're going to apply the Gaussian Blur filter to the mask, so go back up to the Filter menu, select Blur once again, and then select Gaussian Blur. When the dialog box appears, simply click OK to apply the same Radius value we used previously.

Step 16: Colorize The Water With A Hue/Saturation Adjustment Layer

Let's finish things off now by adding just a hint of blue to our water, and we'll use a Hue/Saturation adjustment layer for that. We want the adjustment layer to only affect the bottom half of the image where the water ripples are, so hold down your Alt (Win) / Option (Mac) key, click on the New Adjustment Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers palette, then select Hue/Saturation from the list of adjustment layers:

By holding down "Alt/Option", this tells Photoshop to bring up the New Layer dialog box before adding the adjustment layer. Select the Use Previous Layer To Create Clipping Mask option by clicking inside the checkbox to the left of it:

This option tells Photoshop that we want the adjustment layer to affect only the layer directly below it in the Layers palette, and since the layer below it is the layer containing our water ripples , only the water ripples will be colorized, which is what we want. Click OK to exit out of the dialog box.

This will bring up the Hue/Saturation dialog box. We want to colorize our water, so the first thing we want to do here is select the Colorize option in the bottom right corner. Then select the color you want your water to be by dragging the Hue slider at the top. I'm going to drag my slider to the right to a value of about 218, which I think is a good color for my water :

Click OK to exit out of the dialog box , and you'll see that your water on the bottom has now been colorized, but the color is much too strong at the moment.

Step 17: Lower The Opacity Of The Hue/Saturation Layer

To reduce the intensity of the color we just added to the water , all we need to do is go up to the Opacity option in the top right corner of the Layers palette and lower the opacity value. I'm going to lower mine all the way down to about 25%, which adds a much more realistic amount of color to the water :

Once you've lowered the opacity of the adjustment layer to reduce the color intensity of the water , you're done!

Here once again is my original image for comparison:

And here is my final "water reflection" result:

Just for fun, here's another example of the exact same effect applied to a different image. The only thing I changed here was that I only added half as much canvas space below the original image (I set the "Height" value in the Canvas Size dialog box to 50% instead of 100%). Everything else was done exactly the same way:

And there we have it!

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