Photoshop Water Reflection - Add A Realistic Water Reflection
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Step 13: Use The "Displace" Filter To Create The Water Ripples
We're ready to create our water ripples using the displacement map we just created. With the new merged layer selected in the Layers palette, go back up to the Filter menu at the top of the screen, choose Distort and then choose Displace .
This brings up Photoshop's "Displace" filter dialog box. This is where we determine the strength of our ripple effect, and we do that with the Horizontal Scale option at the top. I'm going to set mine to a value of 4, which will give me a realistic ripple effect. You may want to experiment with this value with your own image. Setting it too high though will create too much of a horizontal distortion and you'll lose the realism.
We don't need any vertical distortion to create our effect, so set the Vertical Scale option to 0. Also, make sure that Stretch To Fit and Repeat Edge Pixels are selected:
Click OK in the top right corner of the dialog box, and Photoshop will ask you which file you want to use as your displacement map. Choose the file that you just saved a moment ago, which I saved to my Desktop as "water-ripples.PSD", and then click Open. Photoshop will then apply the displacement map to the entire image, creating our water ripples :
Step 14: Hide The Ripples On Top With A Layer Mask
Of course, we have a slight problem at the moment. We've added our water ripple effect to the entire image, and we only wanted it in the bottom half. We can fix that easily though using a layer mask. First, Ctrl-click (Win) / Command-click (Mac) directly on the thumbnail for "Layer 1" in the Layers palette to place a selection around the flipped image at the bottom of the document:
You'll see a selection appear around the bottom half of the image in your document. Now, with the merged layer still selected, click on the Layer Mask icon at the bottom of the Layers palette:
Photoshop will add a layer mask to the merged layer, and because we had a selection around the bottom half of our document when we added the layer mask, only the bottom half of the merged layer remains visible. The top half becomes hidden from view, removing the unwanted water ripples from that part of the image:
We're almost done. Let's finish things off by adding a hint of color to the water, which we'll do next.
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