Most of us use a photo editor for touch-up work–fixing red eye, straightening a crooked photo, perhaps even some color correction. Last week, for example, I explained some simple ways to clean up a portrait by removing red eye, whitening teeth, and erasing skin blemishes. But programs like Adobe Photoshop Elements, Corel Paint Shop Pro, and GIMP can do so much more. What if you wanted to add a reflection to a photo, for example, as if your scene were surrounded by water? Today I’ll show you how to do it using Photoshop Elements, and it’ll take about five minutes.

Expand Your Canvas

Suppose you have a photo like this one: A shot of the New York skyline that I recently took from atop Rockefeller Center.

I would like to add a reflection of the skyline to the bottom of the photo, as if all of Manhattan is sitting at the edge of a river. (Manhattan does sit at the edge of a river–two of them, in fact–but not from this particular vantage point.)