Make a Beautiful Reflected Text Effect in Photoshop

The reflected text effect is a commonly used but awesome looking effect when you get it right. It is used by many major companies’ websites, the best known one being apple. In this tutorial I will show you how to do it the right way, and the beautiful thing about the right way is that it is also the fast way. Enjoy.

Starting off

To start this project go ahead and make a new document in photoshop, and for the purposes of teaching you this, copy my dimensions to make it easier. I am using a small document size to keep the focus on the effect, afterwards feel free to make one in whatever size you please.

Step one

Fill the background with a dark grey color, I used #222222, then type out your slogan or name. I used a helvettica type font in a size of about 36px and center it in the middle of your document.

Step two

Now we are going to apply a few effects to the text to give it a little bit of depth. I applied a gradient of black to white with an opacity of 20% and an inner glow with the color white to give the text the appearance of having a slight shadow and outline over it.

Gradient overlay styling

Inner Glow styling

Now your text should look less flat (that technique can be used on a wide variety of fonts to have the same effect).

Step three

Now we need to rasterize the text so we can copy it as a new layer. To do this right click on the text layer in the layers panel and choose the option “Convert to smart object” and then in the same way as the last, click the option labeled “Rasterize Layer” as seen below.

Step Four

Now that your text is ready to copy, select the text layer and duplicate it (ctrl + j in windows). Select the duplicate layer and select the area around it with the rectangular marquee tool as seen below, right click inside the selection, and click free transform.

After that right click inside the selection again and this time choose “Flip vertical” to flip the text over.

Step five

Now that we have the duplicate layer flipped over, move it down so there are about 4 or 5 pixels in between it and the original and you should see something similar to what I have.

Step six

Now to complete the effect, we need to make it look as though it is fading away a little bit. To do this we are going to use the layer mask took located on the bottom of the layers panel. Select the upside down layer and then press the layer mask button.

Step seven

Now make your foreground color solid black, select the gradient tool, and pick the gradient labeled “foreground to transparent”. Go to the image and drag the cursor from midway in the top text layer, to midway in the bottom text layer as seen below.

Final result

You have just learned how to make a reflected text. Pat yourself on the back. I cant say enough how experimentation is key with learning in photoshop, so take this and play around with it a little bit. Try different colors and change some of the variables around and see what you come up with.

source from : graphicdesignpro