Creating reflection effects with Photoshop actions


A very popuplar and really cool looking effect is the illusion of reflective surfaces. You can see this reflection effect on many popular websites, in apple’s itunes or right here in this picture of a Ferrari 355. Although there is a way to create such an image reflection just with javascript and the canvas tag this effect will usually be done by image editing as long as Internet Explorer doesn’t support the magical canvas tag. Therefore I will show you in the following tutorial a way to automate the creation of the reflection using actions in Adobe Photoshop.

What are actions?

Photoshop actions are what you may know as macros from other applications. You can record all the changes you make to an image and replay them on another one. This way you can easily automate common tasks, like resizing, applying multiple filters or … creating a reflection effect.

Prerequisites

When working with actions you should make sure that you have set the units of your ruler to percent. The units of the ruler affect the way coordinates are stored in the actions. By using the option percent all positions within the action are properly replayed on images of different sizes. You can find the setting for ruler units under Edit > Preferences > Units & Rulers.


Creating your own action

We start with opening the image of the Ferrari 355 in Photoshop. You should also have the layers palette (F7) and the actions palette (Alt+F9) open. Click the new action icon in the action palette to create a new action an name it “Reflection“. The record button in the action palette should now be active which means all your changes are recorded from now on.



The first step we have to take is enlarging the canvas for the reflection to fit in. Go to Image > Canvas size and set the parameters according to the next illustration (height 100 percent, check relative, anchor to top middle). After pressing OK you’ll notice that the canvas size operation has been recorded in your action.


Now use ctrl+j to duplicate the Ferrari layer. Notice that the duplicate will automatically become the active layer and the duplicate operation has been recorded also.
Continue with using ctrl+t to switch to free transform mode. Make sure you select the bottom middle as reference point location like shown below.


Now you can right click on the image and choose flip vertical from the context menu. The reference point you selected before causes the image to flip around the bottom side. Finish the transformation by pressing RETURN or clicking the tick in the toolbar.


What we have now is the original image with the vertically flipped image unter it. To create the fading out reflection we need to create a mask by clicking on the add layer mask button. In the layers palette you’ll notice that a mask has been created on the right side of the image which has a black and white border around it – this means it is active.
Press the g key to select the gradient tool and paint a black to white gradient from the middle of the flipped image to the bottom of the original image, as shown in the following illustration.


The reflection effect is almost finished. We just have to dim the reflection down a bit. This can be done by reducing the opacity of the layer. Values between 20% and 30% work pretty well depending on the color of the background.


We are finished creating the reflection. If you like to have the resulting image in the clipboard after applying the action you can press ctrl+a (select all) and shift+ctrl+c (copy all layers merged) before stopping the recording of the action by pressing the stop button in the action palette.


Applying your new action

To test out your newly created action you can use this image of a Lamborghini. Open it in Photoshop, select your reflection action from the action palette and simply press the play button to replay the action. If everything works correctly the Lamborghini should also have a nice reflection and is already stored in the clipboard ready for pasting.



Let’s have a look at the result of our tutorial. I pasted the two supercars with their reflections on a black to grey background as you can see in the following image (click to enlarge):


The End

I hope this tutorial gave a comprehensible introduction into Photoshop actions and you can make use of this simple yet beautiful effect. I certainly improved my knowledge of PS actions while creating this tutorial and learned that it takes several hours writing an article like this, a bit more than I anticipated but it was fun nevertheless.

12 thoughts on “Creating reflection effects with Photoshop actions

  1. I thought there has to be an action created to do this very thing. I’ve seen it all over the net. Apple is using it on everything. I also improved my knowledge of scripts creating the action from your excellent instructions.

    THANK YOU

  2. Hi vb,

    Sorry, I don’t have the saved action handy. You can try to lower the opacity of the reflection layer a bit more. You can also try to make the gradient area bigger for a smoother fade.

     

  3. Hey, thanks for this, it was a huge help! I did do a couple of additional things.For the first step in the action, I unlocked the background layer (I don’t think that’s mentioned, but I found it necessary).Lastly, (this is just a preference) I created a layer folder and pulled the two layers (original and new reflection) into that folder. Thanks again! 

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