Fake Lake

I have quite a few photos of sunsets that I really like, but I don't have any with lakes in them. I really love sunsets and lakes so I decided to make one.
The original that I started with is on the top. I think that it is a pretty nice sunset photo.
1-I started out using Picasa 3 (freeware) and used it to crop my picture. I wanted the tall tree to frame the right side of the photo and cropped it to the highest point. Then I saved it.
2-Next I went to MGI Photosuite 4 and went to compose and the art edit then to Mirage (other software has this feature sometimes called mirror or reflection) and placed the mirage divider at the 1/3 point on the photo. Then I saved it.
3-The next program I used was Gimp (freeware). I started out with using the pencil tool with a very small circle and yellow-white color and looked to see where a little extra highlight in the lake might be nice then using short strokes I placed the strokes where I thought they should go.
4-Then I used the smudge tool set to a much larger circle (#15) and started to smudge the lake going horizontally across the lake going up to the trees. Carefully I start pulling little bits of tree color into the lake. I get it smudged to approximately what I what it to look like.
5-Next I zoomed to 100% and slowly going from side to side going horizontally occasionally pulling down some color from above. I continue to smudge and smooth the colors until I was satisfied.
6-I zoomed back to 25% and checked to make sure I it looked the way I wanted, everything blended evenly and reflecting the sunset above (not blended to far away from where it should be)
7-Went to Picnic (free on Internet) to sign and frame it.
I always use cnet.com to download my freeware.
This took me several tries and several hours to do. If you want to try it - this should save you some tries and time. Enjoy