How to make a great reflection the easy way

[windrider86]

The before image wasnt bad but it lacked that oomf you see from a calm water reflection.

I used the Flaming Pear Flood plug in and created the reflection with a click of the button. Played with the settings until it looked calm. This was done on a duplicate layer of course. I then hid the duplicate layer and split the channels on the orginal to rgb. In this case the one that had the most contrast was the red channel. Raise the levels so that the black is as black as it could be and white is pure white.
In this instance I wanted just the foregrund to stand out so that needed to be black in the mask, so I turned my red channel into a negative but there was still too much grays. So I painted the sky pure white and the bottom part all black.
Used this image as my mask and wala, you have a nice reflection

[corry]

well that is awesome!!! love it. well done and thanks for the tutorial.

[private]

Again - I bow down to your prowess. Very well done - IMO

[windrider86]

Pretty much anything and everything I have learned has been from this forum. So dont thank me, thank all theones before me who showed me the light. Wulf, Jiminy, Saralonde, and a few others whom i am sure will remember as soon as I close this

[dannyrich]

I often wonder whether i will ever be bothered to learn photoshop.

Short of the ligtest processing im rubbish!

Photoshop[ makes me want to be able to get things straight from camera!

[windrider86]

hmmm, I'm not sure how to take that as it could be construed several different ways, but I will decide to take it as a postive comment.
I didnt know a thing about post processing but have learned what I know from this forum. Post Processing to me, is digital painting. Kind of like when a painter sees a landscape and decides to improve upon one thing or another and paints it differently than what they see. Same with abstract art that is painted on canvas. It's all in the artists persepction. And how they chose to acheive that goal

[kirbinster]

The left side looks very real, but the right side looks more like a pile of dirt to me than a reflection - sorry just how I see it.

[windrider86]

Even tho this was supposed to be a tutorial help kind of thing I appreciate your critique

[bubbabyte]

I don't get it. Don't take this the wrong way but i'm pretty sure you aren't supposed to see reflections in bushes. The water reflection is nice, but i'm not sure why you didn't erase the lower half of the reflection because bushes don't show reflections.. ever.

[windrider86]

Originally Posted by bubbabyte

I don't get it. Don't take this the wrong way but i'm pretty sure you aren't supposed to see reflections in bushes. The water reflection is nice, but i'm not sure why you didn't erase the lower half of the reflection because bushes don't show reflections.. ever.

if you look the water is showing thru the bushes. reflections dont stop just because there is foilage
thanks as well for you input even tho I didnt post it in the critique section I appreciate your thoughts