Water Skyline Photoshop

Tutorial

 

I found this YouTube tutorial that claimed to allow me to make a water reflection in Photoshop in an easy way that was easy to follow.

 

 

Image

I liked the idea of having flats as a background, to connote the image of an urban drama set on an estate. Using Photoshop for the first time, I wanted an interesting way to manipulate the picture to make it more interesting. I then came to the idea that the flats reflecting it water would make a good picture. I Googled 'flats' and I proceeded to use this picture as I liked the height of the flats in addition to the clear blue skyline, juxtaposing the darkness.

 

 

Creating Water

This was my first time using Photoshop so I needed a clear and concise YouTube video so that I could follow along with instructions easily, and then make minimal mistakes. My first instruction was to resize the picture so that it would be effective when reflecting, so I proceed to make the picture wider, so I would get a wider reflection in the 'water'.

 

 

Reflection

I then had to change the widths so that the picture was easy to work with, and the squares you can see on the screen were the key feature in order for the photo to reflect as in water, so dot in the centre of the square had to be moved up so that this signalised the horizon. I then had to create a copy of this layer so that I could edit and adjust as appropriate. 

 

 

Comparison

This then led to the picture being reflected as if the flats were situated on water. I split the screens on my mac so I could adjust what I had with what was on the tutorial. I noticed that due to the slight slant in the original flats picture, this occurred in the reflection and was much more obvious.

 

 

Realistic

I then proceeded to make another copy of the layer and continued with the tutorial, I had to edit the layer to 'add noise' and although I don't fully understand why this had to happen at first, I then realised that this was vital for the reflections to be created in the 'water' otherwise the picture would have appeared very unrealistic.

 

Ripples

By filtering the layer and adding a blur, this is what allowed there to be the ripples in the water, and by using a large paintbrush I was able to add in the ripples myself to create the realistic effect of water, making them larger at the bottom then smaller closer to the horizon where 'water' and land meet.

 

 

My first Photoshopped picture.