We live in a world of objects and images, words and emotions, sounds and smells. And besides, we live in a world of reflections and shadows. And these reflections make up more than 70% of what we see and feel, complementing the visual range with new colors, and our emotions with new nuances. Reflections in art have long been used to enhance the emotional component, giving the works an unusual, third dimension, mystery. Almost all the great masters, from classical realists to impressionists and surrealists, used the technique of reflection as a means of enhancing artistic perception.
This topic has not been ignored by modern Internet technologies. Today, mirroring is a popular method of creating new images by improving existing ones. The image of shadows is actively used in the creation of logos and advertising posters. It is beautiful, expressive, always new and relevant.
In addition, specular reflection has become an effective anti-plagiarism method. The fact is that search engines track every image on the Internet for its direct borrowing or copying. In this matter, the use of reflections becomes, at times, the only accessible and simple solution to the problem. If you take a suitable image and create a mirror image in Photoshop, you can use it as a unique image indexed by search engines, without fear of the disgrace of search engines.
Another important application of reflected images is such a popular method these days as printing pictures on t-shirts and t-shirts. Before transferring the image to transfer paper, it must first be mirrored, since most image transfer techniques exclude direct copying. This is especially true if the image has any text.
In Photoshop, mirroring is quite simple.
You just need to copy the existing image to a new layer (Copy / Layer / Create a new layer / Paste), move the new layer below (or to the side, depending on the context of the image) and make a vertical (or horizontal) flip, i.e. go to the Menu, Edit / Transform / Rotate vertically (horizontally). This will mirror the image or text. Next, you need to reduce the transparency of reflection. To do this, click on the Opacity section in the layer section and change 100% to a smaller value. This can be done either by typing the desired percentage, or by pressing the keyboard arrow down gradually decreasing the transparency value. In the latter case, you can control the reflection density on the image and stop at the optimal result. Sometimes 30% is enough, sometimes more is needed. It all depends on the specific case.
If the image is text, then you need to convert the text mode of the layer to raster. This is done in order to make it possible to give the reflection a natural fading look. Right-click in the layer section and select Rasterize Type. After that, the text will become part of the image, which can be edited as a picture, but changing the text itself, adding letters, punctuation marks will no longer be possible.
Next, choose an eraser, reduce its transparency to 10-15% and wipe the necessary part of the image, creating a natural look of fading reflection.
That's all. Mirror Image Ready. It remains only to combine the layers and save the document in the desired format.