This is the original source for the cherries. Note that the left cherry is in front of both the leaf to its left and the other cherry to its right. In order to have it reflecting both of these, I had to put it *behind* both. This part is easy. Just select a similar piece of the leaf to the left (where it is unobstructed by the cherry) and paste that in front of the spot where the leaf covers the cherry. The same technique can be used to cover the right edge of the left cherry where it is tucked behind the other cherry. This is subtle, as it is just a sliver of leaf covering the edge, but it is hugely important since nothing can reflect something that is behind it!

Here are both sources for reference. As you can see, the source for the chrome was this really cool mirrored sphere. This was convenient, but not necessary. The same effect could be acheived with any image by using the spherize filter or the bloat tool within the liquify filter.

The next step is to simply copy and paste the sphere over the cherry. Get the size close to that of the cherry. At this point, you can see it's going to take some doing to make it look like anything other than a sphere! (Incidently, I cloned out all the obelisks and their shadows for the actual image.)

Save now! This is the critical step. We can't just apply a cherry-shaped mask to the sphere, or the reflections will be all wrong. We need to actually scoot the pixels around to distort the reflection into what something cherry-shaped might reflect. This is called warping, and was new to Photoshop CS2. You can use the liquify filter, but it will be more labor-intensive and difficult.

Warping is too easy! Select what you want to warp, and then select EDIT > TRANSFORM > WARP. When you do this, you'll get a box around your selection with bezier handles just like a path. You can move these handles around and warp your selection into any shape. If you ever used Illustrator's free distort tool, you'll be instantly trained!

TIP: If you get it close, but not quite "ON", you can apply the warp and then warp it again to fine-tune. This is WAY easier than trying to get it perfect the first time! You can also use the liquify filter for touch-up.

TIP: SAVE EARLY, SAVE OFTEN, SAVE NOW! Seriously, I crashed using warp after putting a couple hours into this image! I had not saved. (Save your pity for someone who DID save!)

OK, now we have a cherry shaped piece of chrome reflecting, uh, the wrong stuff. We can't see what's behind us, so we'll buy that the cherry tree is in a park or something, but what about what's immediately around it? We need to at least get the other cherry and the big leaf into the reflections.

I do this just like I did the chrome itself. Simply copy the leaf (or some portion of it) and warp it around the edge. There is a little art to this, but not much. Remember, the distortion gets most extreme at the edges. I used this technique for all the edge reflections. Don't forget you can use the liquify filter to fine-tune the distortion.

At this point, I wanted to get a little of the texture from the 'real' cherry applied to the chrome one. That's totally easy: Just make a rough selection of the 'real' cherry, and copy that. Paste it over the chrome cherry, and set the layer mode to "overlay". Also, desaturate that layer entirely so it's just gray. It's subtle, but it makes it look like a chrome cherry as opposed to a cherry-shaped piece of chrome. At the end of this tutorial, there is a screenshot of my layers pallete for your reference.

Here's what my shading layer looks like with all the others turned off. (The shading layer is set to multiply, and its opacity is a matter of taste.)

Chrome is reflective, but it still casts shadows. This layer is just painted with a soft brush. It's effect on the image is very obvious. After you're done with it, toggle it on and off, and you'll see what I mean.

We've dealt with the shadows, now we can deal with the light! If you look at the 'real' cherry, you'll see a spectral highlight (fancy term for nothing at all). It's the white hole in the cherry. Put a similar one on the chrome to keep the light source consistent. This is quite simply a freehand selection filled with white. There's one on the chrome cherry and a little one up on the stem where it's chrome. (The chrome on the stem was pretty much just painted.)

Here is my layers pallete, so you can see what I've been rambling about...

Good luck and have fun.

Photoshop tutorial by briansteenstry originally posted on Worth1000.

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Written by DesignCrowd on Thursday, February 16, 2017

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