The water that was original to this picture was choppy, brown, and barely reflective.

Not every scene photographs the way you see it in your mind’s eye. Say you find a great spot for a landscape and position yourself for a composition with an interesting foreground, middleground, and background. The lake is lovely, but it’s windy and the surface of the water is choppy instead of tranquil. You take the shot because you won’t be coming back to this place, but later find the final result lacking. There’s no need to live with it—you can fake it in Adobe Photoshop.

Plenty of photographers oppose doing these kinds of interventions to pictures, but we think it’s fun sometimes to mess with reality, using software as the tool that it is.

In that spirit, here’s how to create a mirror-like reflection, even if mother nature didn’t provide one