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Water Reflection Effect

Continue editing Open in workflow
Often followed by + Contrast + Sharpen

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Settings are written to the URL as you change them. Nothing differs from the defaults yet.

Mirror the frame below a waterline

Set the waterline where the scene should meet water, and the region below it is replaced by a mirrored sample of the region above. The part of the image above the line is untouched.

The mirror is compressed slightly rather than copied one to one. A one-to-one mirror is geometrically correct only when the camera sits level with the surface, and almost no photograph is taken from there.

Ripples grow toward the viewer

The reflection is displaced by 3 wave trains at unrelated frequencies. Their spacing compresses toward the waterline because the surface recedes from the viewer there, and their amplitude grows toward the foreground.

Displacement is mostly vertical. A sideways shear reads as warped glass, while real water lifts and drops the mirrored image along the line of sight. Ripple strength sets the maximum, and crests facing the viewer pick up a glint keyed to the wave slope.

Tint and fade are different jobs

Water tint scales the colour channels toward the water hue, normalized against that colour’s own luminance so the exposure holds. It is what makes the reflection read as being seen through water rather than as a flipped photograph, and it keeps the detail intact even at 100.

Depth fade dissolves the reflection into the surface toward the bottom of the frame, so the foreground loses detail the way a rough surface loses it. Tint alone gives an evenly coloured mirror; fade alone keeps the waterline clear and dissolves the lower reflection.

Example: building on a canal

Load a photo of a building shot straight on with its base near the bottom third. Set the waterline at the base, around 62%.

Set Ripple strength around 22, then Water tint around 14 and Depth fade around 24. The windows should remain identifiable near the waterline and break into softer streaks toward the bottom edge. If the whole reflection reads as coloured glass, tint is too high.

Limits of a flat mirror

The mirror is computed from the pixels above the line, not from the scene, so anything hidden behind a foreground object has no reflection to draw. A wall in front of the building reflects the wall.

There is also no lighting model. A bright sky reflects as a bright band even where a real surface would be dark from the viewing angle. Keep the waterline against an unbroken horizontal edge and the geometry holds up.

Frequently Asked Questions

No. The reflection replaces the part of the frame below the waterline rather than extending the canvas, so the exported file keeps the original dimensions.

On a real horizontal edge in the photo: the base of a building, a shoreline, the bottom of a treeline. A waterline drawn through the middle of a subject cuts it in half and the reflection starts mid-object.

Ripple amplitude grows with distance from the waterline and the wave spacing compresses toward it. On real water the surface texture is visible close to the viewer and collapses to nothing near the horizon, so even ripples read as glass rather than water.

The colour the reflection is scaled toward, on an arc from green through blue to violet. Around 200 gives a lake blue; lower values move toward the green of shallow or algal water.

No. Tint scales the colour channels instead of mixing toward a flat colour, so the reflected detail survives at any tint value. Depth fade is the control that dissolves detail, and it only acts toward the bottom of the frame.

There is less image to mirror than there is water to fill, so the read position folds back down the frame and keeps supplying texture. The alternative is a smeared row of pixels and a hard seam across the surface.

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