In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to add a matching reflection of a Sky Replacement in the water in Photoshop. Let’s get started.
The Problem With Photoshop’s Sky Replacement Feature
Photoshop has made automated selections very easy in the past few years. But there is still room for improvement with its Sky Replacement feature. As you can see, there’s no option to add or adjust the new sky’s reflection in the water.
For certain images, this could be quite problematic because, without the proper reflection, the image won’t be realistic. This may clue in some viewers that a fake sky was used.
Let’s show you how to solve this problem.
Step 1: Create a Flipped Duplicate of the Sky Replacement
To add a matching reflection in the water, you first have to go through the brief steps of replacing the sky in Photoshop. If you need a refresher, check out how to use Sky Replacement in Photoshop.
Then we’ll duplicate the Background layer and perform another sky selection on a vertically-flipped version of the image. Then we’ll flip the image back to its original orientation.
If you want to follow along, you can download this example image from Unsplash.
With the image loaded into Photoshop, press Ctrl + J to duplicate the layer. Go to Edit > Sky Replacement. From the Sky dropdown menu, choose a sunset sky that best matches your image. For this example, we won’t change any of the settings. But if you want to, you’ll have to make note of the changes to apply the same settings to the flipped layer later on. All we’ll do is change the Output To to Duplicate Layer. Then press OK. Deselect the Layer 1 Copy layer at the top. Select Layer 1. Press Ctrl + T to access the Transform tool. Right-click on the image and select Flip Vertical. Then press the checkmark or Enter on your keyboard. Once again, replace the sky by going to Edit > Sky Replacement. The same sky and settings should be preloaded in the menu. Simply press OK. Press Ctrl + T for the Transform tool again. Select Flip Vertical to return the layer to its original orientation. Then press Enter.
What we’re left with are four layers, the top two of which we’ll be working with to add a matching reflection in the water.
Want to try this in another program? We also show you how to replace boring skies with Luminar AI.
Step 2: Create a Mask to Add the Matching Reflection to the Water
The first thing we’ll do is clean up our layer stack by deleting Layer 1. Then we’ll create a layer mask on the top of the layer stack and brush in the reflection on the water.
Drag and drop Layer 1 into the trashcan to delete it. Unhide Layer 1 Copy and select it. Add a layer mask by clicking on the Layer Mask icon at the bottom. Press B for the Brush tool and select a Soft Round brush. With the mask selected, brush in the sky reflection at the bottom of the image. We show you how to use the Brush tool in Photoshop if you need help.
Now, we have a perfect copy of the sky’s reflection in the water. But to make it more realistic, we’ll make a few more adjustments.
Step 3: Reduce the Opacity and Add Motion Blur
In real life, the sky’s reflection in the water rarely matches the intensity of the sky itself. We’ll decrease the Opacity on the middle layer to fix this. We’ll also add an optional blur effect to the same layer.
Select the middle layer. Reduce the Opacity to 60%. Go to Filter > Blur > Motion Blur. In the Motion Blur menu, change the Angle to 90. Change the Distance to 150 and press OK.
That’s it! Here are the results:
Before
After
Don’t Forget to Create a Water Reflection of Your Sky Replacement
Replacing the sky in Photoshop is easy, but it doesn’t always yield realistic results if there is a body of water in the picture. This tutorial showed you how to fix that. It may seem like a lot of steps, but once you practice this trick, you can add a matching reflection in the water in less than a minute.
