Kingsley's Blog

Reflections are very popular right now in both web and motion graphics. Just look at Apple’s  iTunes web graphic or the PSA for fuel economy to see how popular this trend is currently.

In static graphics (2D text), this is a fairly easy graphic to create in Photoshop:

• create a gradient background
• create your graphic
• copy your graphic
• flip your graphic by choosing free transform and dialing in negative 100 for the height value
• position your copy directly below to create your reflection
• turn down the opacity to 50% (lower if your text is dark)
• blur it slightly
• ad a gradient mask so that the reflect get more opaque the further it gets to the bottom
• that’s it!

For motion graphics it’s a different story and a bit more complicated. Fortunately Videocopilot.net has recognized this and recorded an excellent tutorial for how to create this effect with a few tips on how to make the text easily changeable:

3D Reflections

What if we want to create static graphic with 3D text and and graphics?

I created the above graphic in After Effects and Photoshop. The 3D screenshots could probably have been done in Photoshop as well but they were more quickly, easily and accurately created in After Effects using 3D layers and camera. I then positioned the text and logo in Photoshop.

One issue in After Effects for print is that of resolution. There seems to be no way to render at anything higher than 72 pixels per inch (ppi). The trick is to create a canvas at the size and resolution you need in Photoshop first, say at 300 ppi, and then bring that into After Effects as your base layer in your composition. Once you have finished your design, render it at 72 ppi and bring it back into Photoshop to convert it to 300 ppi using the image size command. All the pixels you need should be there as After Effects makes an 9.5 x 8.5 inch canvas at 300 ppi into a 39.5 x 35.5 inch canvas at 72 ppi.