Keetee

A nice fellow from the FreelanceSwitch Forums was asking me about a reflection effect I used, so I decided to share a tutorial on the subject with everyone. We’re going to create a stack of photos and give them a slick reflection.

Final Image Preview

Assets

• Session on the Beach 3 by Piotr Bizior

The Process

First, crop the image down to 310×400px.

Open a new document at 500×700 and fill the background with 50% gray.

Paste your newly cropped photo in the middle of the canvas.

With your photo layer selected, go to Edit » Transform » Perspective. Grab the top-right handle and drag it slightly downward so that the left side appears closed than the right.

Duplicate this layer. Select your new layer and press CTRL + T to go into Transform mode (or go to Edit » Free Transform). At the top of the screen will be some additional options—in the width and height boxes, enter 95%.

Now duplicate the layer you just resized and apply the same treatment. Repeat again so that you have four photos that are increasingly small.

Reverse the order of the layers so that the smallest photo is on the bottom. Then arrange them as shown in the photo below. Make sure they all have the same horizontal center.

Select one of your photo layers, right-click, and go to Blending Options. Check the Drop Shadow option, select it, and change the options to 50% opacity, 3px distance, and 4px size. Click OK.

Copy this layer style to all the other photo layers.

Select all four of the photo layers and duplicate them. Select your newly duplicated layers and go to Edit » Transform » Flip Horizontal. All at the same time, drag the four layers so that the foremost photo’s corner touches that of the original. See below:

With all those layers still selected, go to Edit » Transform » Distort. Grab the top-right handle and drag it upwards. Do the same for the bottom-right handle. Adjust until the photos until they align with the original like a reflection. Like this:

Now merge those four reflection photo layers. Apply a pixel mask by going to Window » Masks and clicking the Pixel Mask button. (Here’s an introduction to pixel masks if you’re new to them.)

Select the layer mask. Select the Gradient Tool from the Tools window and set it to a black-to-white gradient using the options at the top. The drag from the center of the image to the bottom of the canvas:

Reduce the opacity of this layer to 50%.

Select your background layer and fill it with a darker gray color. Go to Filter » Noise » Add Noise. Select 1% and click OK.

Create a new layer directly above your background. Select an area similar to the one below and fill with a radial gradient with white on the inside.

The result:

Duplicate your gradient layer and move your new gradient to cover the remaining area of the canvas.

Set the Blending Mode of both gradient layers to Overlay.

Merge all layers.

Go to Filter » Render » Lighting Effects. Select the Spotlight light type and adjust the lighting effects for a subtle spotlight to tie the piece together.

Final Image

There you go! A slick reflection. Hope you enjoyed this tutorial!