Just Ducky

[Blacknight]

Would this be considered a taillight?

[Blacknight]

Just Ducky

Duck from a manipulation challenge, but I think he's also on the CD for Photoshop 7 somewhere. Cut out and pasted onto a layer.

A quick Bryce mountain/water after dark background layer.

On a new layer with the VECTOR elipse tool (not the one with the dotted lines for icon, but the new one since version 6, I think) I drew an elipse roughly the shape of the duck tail.

With the direct selection tool (press the A key) you can then select the points on the elipse and make it fit the contour of the tail better, which I did. Once this is done it doesn't have to remain vector, which it won't in a minute...

Did a bevel and emboss, inner bevel, on the shape. While there, also did an outer glow with the same color as the duck, picked with the eyedropper after clicking on the square with the outer glow color. Picked a contour that gave me the glow shape I wanted by playing with the optional contours down at the bottom of the outer glow window.

Did a lighting effect (FILTER/RENDER/LIGHTING EFFECTS) on the duck layer to make it look more like the light was coming from the tail, using whater it defaults to in Photoshop and spotlight.

Drew a rectangle with the marquee tool across the bottom of the waves just at the bottom edge of the duck, then copied it.

Opened a new document (which automatically comes up the same dimensions as what you have cut or copied - kewl, huh!) and pasted in the waves. Went to channels and picked the one with the most contrast and duplicated it, then selected it. Changed it to grayscale (IMAGE/MODE/GRaYSCALE), flattening it to grey. Dragged to the duck image, and dropped.

Moved grey waves to position and erased (at 50%) the areas in front and behind the duck. The idea was a bit of a reflection but only a hint of one. Ran the ripple (FILTER/DISTORT/OCEAN RIPPLE) on it with a low setting, then blurred the edges with the blur tool.

Used the Hue/Saturation (IMAGE/ADJUSTMENTS/HUE/SATURATION) to desaturate and darken the background a little, then called it done.

[d_kendal]

great job Blacknight!

- David

[T Paul]

Blacknight,

Hey every duck at sea should have a taillight.

Nicely done and a great description! A question on your water reflection though…wouldn’t it reflect more the color of the taillight? Just a thought. You know rubber duckies with taillights would make tub play for kids a lot more interesting.

-T

[DJ Dubovsky]

Kind of a reverse Rudolf. Excellent job of making that little tail glow so well. I really think it's so cute.
DJ

[Blacknight]

Originally posted by T Paul
Blacknight,

Hey every duck at sea should have a taillight.

Nicely done and a great description! A question on your water reflection though…wouldn’t it reflect more the color of the taillight? Just a thought. You know rubber duckies with taillights would make tub play for kids a lot more interesting.

-T

I thought about that, and of taking the whole duck and putting it on a layer and flipping it and doing a displacement map for the water and running filters on it, but finally decided that the end wouldn't justify the means in such a small area, so went with what I went with.

Oh - and thanks to whoever moved the description and the duck pic to the same place. I realized too late that I had done it in separate areas. See my sig for why I did that...