There are many ways to edit or enhance a photo with special effects, whether you're sprucing up your vacation photo gallery or creating effects for your website. A reflection is an effect that gives a certain eye candy to your photos by giving a reflect and fade effect as though your photo were on a shiny or reflective surface. Adding this effect can be done with many graphics applications, and only requires editing a few different layer settings.
Instructions
1. Open your graphics editing application. If you don't have one apart from Paint, you can use a free online graphics editor such as Splashup or Pixlr (see Resources).
2. Open the image you want to add a reflection to inside the graphics application.
3. Increase the height of the image to make room for the reflection. In most applications this can be accessed by clicking "Canvas Size" from the "Image" menu. You can experiment by adding about 50 pixels or more at a time, depending on how much you think you need. However, if you want to decrease the height later, some cropping may occur.
4. Right click on the "Background" or original layer found in the "Layers" tool box (usually to the right of your work screen), then click "Duplicate" or "Duplicate layer."
5. Select the duplicated layer, then flip it vertically. Click "Image" or Edit" to find the "Rotate layer vertically" option, which will flip it upside down.
6. Select the move tool (which looks like an arrow or cursor) and drag the flipped layer down to where the top of the flipped layer touches the bottom of the original layer. It should look like a perfect reflection, as though you are holding it to a mirror.
7. Select the rectangular selection tool again, then edit the "Feather" option on the top toolbar to about 30. Click and drag a selection over the very bottom of the image, where the flipped layer meets the bottom border. Don't select any of the image close to the original layer. Once you have selected it, press your "Backspace" or "Delete" key to erase the selection portion. It should look as though the flipped layer is fading away as it moves down.
8. Edit the "Opacity" option in the "Layers" toolbox for the flipped layer. Change the integer inside from "100" to a smaller number. The lower the number, the more faded the image will become, which will make it appear more like a reflection and not just a mirror view. Edit to your discretion, and your reflection will be complete.
