You could use the perspective tool to help some, I tried this myself and although it was better in appearance, it still shows as being off.

This is a quick rough draft, I wasn't attempting to make it a first round perfection attempt:

I tried the perspective tool, I may not be that good at it. I had no trouble getting the side of the car it was the front that was confusing me. That's when I posted.

Wife was wondering what I was gumbling over! LoL Was that a combination of rotate and perspective?

on the contrary Rod, I think the Cage Transform tool is exactly what you need to use in this case, but it's not going to be the only step in the process. You'll have to manually add some details in the bottom of the car, but honestly if you just faded the reflection right I think you can get it to work. Take a look at this car's reflection:



All we have to do is emulate what is added and removed from the car's view like this. In reality the only part that will stay is the side and front of the car.

Although, PC is totally right - this tutorial is somewhat misleading. I think I'll take a stab at this and see what I can come up with.

...and after I posted this I realized there was two more pages of forum content on this topic.

I understand what Tux is saying. In the reflection, the bottom (underneath) part of the car should show to make it look like a real reflection.
Actually it doesn't look like it would be possible to do but then again it might be by simulating a blurred image of the underside. Dunno.

The reflections are looking good but they don't show the underneath part of the car which would be impossible to make imo. Here is a picture of an actual reflection showing the under side. Actual car reflection

I think if you took a stock image of a car bottom and threw it on the underside of your car and add some perspective distortion you'll get it.

@Oregonian, This reflection not only shows the bottom, also shows the tires and roof details. I think it's a reflection made with postproduction and using more than one photo.

As I show in the pictures, I think that when the angle between the red and white lines turn away from 0, is more difficult to obtain a fake reflection using only one photo:

yes in the first case you may simulate well a reflection mirroring
in the second case is quite hard

Ah, I see. So if I was basically if I was height wise at a zero angle it would have been possible. Gotcha!

I was trying that cage transform in 2.7.4 but it just kept crashing gimp on that dusty P4 box I have at work. I'll give it a shot now that I'm home for the weekend.



The ripples I think take away from the fact that the under side of the car is missing.

I have followed this thread with interest. It appears that a mirror will not do the job in any case as the contour in the reflection changes except for a near level mirror.
I actually tried this with photoshop CS5 using the free transform, perspective and puppet warp tool. I could not get a nice result. Mind you , I am not very proficient at Ps.
I am using 2.6.11 and thought that perhaps another approach would enable a reasonable reflection. It is very labour intensive but seems to work.
Basically I took slices of the original, flipped them vertically and used skew to align the top and bottom. Further modification is necessary where the incident angles of the perspective change using other modifiers such as size,perspective,etc. Where the angle is closer to Zero larger slices give good results but thin slices are required where the angles get larger or change.
Definitely not for the fainthearted. A script to make slices of a user determined thickness that flips the slice vertically and place it in another layer would be a boon.
One could then position each slice individually and massage it to achieve a reasonable result.
I think a nice fade would still be required to make a nice "deception"!
Here is my attempt to make a reflection/deception.
Just another way to attack a problem

Man, you have gone to a lot of work there. I have never even used slice yet. Maybe with a bit of fading in the reflection it would work perfectly. Very nicely done Wbool.

The more I look at the problem the more difficult it becomes.
I was unhappy with the reflected contour and used a little DinkyToy Car on a mirror to study the reflection and just as the underside of the car is invisible so are large parts of the top side of the car. (obvious when you think of it, in hindsight)
I did not expect that as my brain says whatever I can see here is mirrored but this is not so!
So unless an artist works from an actual photograph it is impossible to make a truthful representation of the mirrored image .
I enclose another screenshot of the mirrored image . The Yellow areas are not reflected and bunch the adjoining reflections together. (according to my DinkyToy theory)

Outstanding approach! Would have never thought of it! I'm going to have to give this a whirl!

There's on slice missing .. from the front maker light to the mid of the left head light. Then again I'm sure this was just for the edumacational purposes!

When you speak on the deception I agree. I think if you couple the fade along with something like Alex exhibited a ripple in the watery reflection it masks the deception even further.

Next time I take a photo that I'm going to use of this nature be it my own car or something from a car show I'm going to try and make sure that cars side and front or back bumpers are at or close to zero degrees. Unlike this photo which is more of a 5 degree bend in it. I can see where that slight bit of perfection goes along way!

Get out one of your Tonka toys and try it MrBiggz.