The Gimp: How to Create Simple Water Reflections

Hi and welcome to another Gimp tutorial. This time we will learn how to create, a simply water effect along with the flexion of an object on the surface of the water, and we will start by opening a new template, I will stick with the default size here and because I want to demonstrate the effect by creating a little moon shine scene, I choose to fill the layer with the fore ground color which is sent to black, and with the template. Now we open a new layer we can name this water, and we want it to be transparent. Say okay. And I also lock the background layer so I do not mess around with that.

And then I activate the water layer, right click on it, go down to filters render, clouds, solid moist. And now we have to play around with those texts on Y size, settings and for the X I will choose the low setting. Let us say 1.9, and the Y it has to be mixed out.

Then we got our surface and we need to fill this color, of course. Because you see it is not just white and black, so we choose the gradient tool and as the gradient, simply choose something that is looks like, sea, and in this case I am using the deep sea gradient. And again right click onto the water layer, go down to filters and colors, and choose map, gradient map. And there we got our basic water surface, now all we need is a little bit of perspective and, first of all we have to right click into that layer, and make sure we select all. Then we choose the transformation tool which is, this one up here, and make sure you clip the result. Let us adjust a few little bit, so we can actually transform this. We click into a layer, with the transformation tool. And now we simply drag those corners, the way we want them.

To move these to there, and the upper corners, a little bit higher. That should do it there. That should do it, and say it transforms, and now we got the perspective. And again we right click into that layer, and we anchor that layer by going to layer anchor.

And as I said, I want to create a little moon shine scene, so what I really do is, I will simply drag this water layer down here, so we got something like a horizon. See it here? And now we need the object that we want to mirror, and then we want to reflect on the water surface, so I open an image as a layer. In this case, image of the moon, make sure the other layers are locked. And then I move the moon up too the horizon. And that should do it.

Now we induplicate this layer, by right clicking on it. Selecting duplicate, then we go to the layer options. And go to transform, and say flip vertically. And then, we move this layer down on the water. This will be our reflection on the water surface.

Now we adjust the opacity of the reflection a little bit because do not want it to be as bright as the moon itself. That should do it. And since the water has all those waves on it, the reflection cannot be just the perfect circles so, what we will do is, we will right click into that layer of the reflection, the copy of the moon, go down to filters. The warp you cannot see that, in here.

Choose under filters, map, and the warp filter and now we play around with the step size up here, and in this case, I will simply demonstrate the effect by using the step size, 12. Say okay. And now we see it. That it is look like the moon is reflecting the water.

I hope you like the tutorial and if you did, I hope I will see you next time.