TipClique Photoshop Tutorial - Home

This Photoshop tutorial will show you how to create a reflection for your text. There are more simple ways to do this, but if you want styled text, and you want to have it remain resizable without loss of quality, this is the way to go.

First, create a new document and type the text you would like to apply the reflection. The font used in this tutorial is the Zrnic font at 100 pts.

Download the styles here, and extract them anywhere you want. Load them into Photoshop by dragging, and dropping the file into the Photoshop workspace. Apply the text style, which is the one that is the darker of the two.

Now duplicate the text layer by pressing ctrl + j (command + j for Mac) on the keyboard. You can now apply the second style to the duplicate layer.

Next select Edit - Transform - Flip Vertical from the menu, then hold down the ctrl key, and drag the flipped text below the original text.

Optionally you can add a little perspective by selecting Layer - Type - Convert to Shape from the menu, press 'a' on the keyboard, then click the combine button on the options bar.

Now select Edit - Transform - Perspective from the menu. You can now drag the bottom right corner to the right to the desired perspective you want, and press enter on the keyboard to apply it.

Next adjust the vertical scale by selecting Edit - Transform - Scale from the menu, and dragging the bottom center node up until you have the desired scale, again press enter to apply it.

(Ctrl/Command) Click the vector mask thumbnail to create a selection. Expand this selection by 2 pixels by selecting Select - Modify - Expand from the menu, and entering 2 into the box that pops up.

Now click the Add layer mask button.

Next alt click (option click for Mac) the new layer mask thumbnail.

Select the Gradient Tool, with foreground to transparent as the type, and black as the foreground color, click and drag the mouse from the bottom to top of the mask, then alt click (option click for Mac) the layer mask thumbnail again to exit mask editing mode.

Optionally you can add a gradient behind the text by using the rectangular marquee to select the bottom half of a new layer just above the background layer, and then use the gradient tool with foreground to background as the style, and your colors set with a foreground of blue, and the background set to white, then just drag the gradient tool from top to bottom to fill the selection. I also lowered the opacity to around 25 for the gradient layer.

Another optional step you can apply for added realism is to (Ctrl/Command) click the thumbnail on the text layer, then open an image of a sky or any other scene you want to use, then create a new layer above the text layer and paste the image into that selection by selecting Edit - Paste Into from the menu. Then set the layers blend mode to soft light, and lower the opacity to 50 or so.

That's all there is to it.