Tip: Create a realistic reflection with Generative Fill

Introduction

Generative Fill in Photoshop does a great job of creating realistic reflections on water and other reflective surfaces.

Many creative reflections look fake because you're just flipping the same image.

In reality, a reflection actually shows a different angle of the object that we're reflecting.

Hi, I'm Colin Smith from www.photoshopcafe.com, and today I'm going to show you how to create super realistic reflections inside of Photoshop with Generative fill.

Let's create a reflection down here on the ground.

The first thing we want to do is make a selection

Creating a realistic reflection with Generative Fill

in the shape of the reflection we want to create.

So let's grab the Lasso Tool and make your selection.

We're going to go to the Contextual Taskbar and click on Generative Fill.

Now let's type it upfront of what we want to generate, Reflective puddle, and let's click on Generate.

And Generative Fill, will create the reflection for us.

Choosing the best reflection variation

Now we can go to the Variations inside the Properties panel, and we can tap on three different variations to see which one we prefer.

We can also preview different variations by clicking on the arrow here in the Contextual Taskbar.

I like the second one best.

And notice how it shows the underside of the vehicle much more realistic than a flipped reflection.

And here it is before

Comparing results and refining realism

and after.

And you can see how easy it is to create reflections using Generative Fill inside of Adobe Photoshop.

Why don't you give this a try on your own images and also try adjusting the opacity with different variations.