Cartoon Bubbles in Photoshop

Underwater scenes look so much cooler with bubbles. Being the ever-ready Photoshop pusher, I just had to figure out how to create really nice looking bubbles in Photoshop. What I've come up with is a simple 5-step process for creating really nice bubbles that can look more or less cartoon or illustration - ish depending on what kind of graphic you're using them in.

You won't need any special filters or plug-ins to perform this tutorial. Everything you need is built right into all versions of Photoshop from 7.0 through the current CS2. The specific steps here are done in Photoshop CS2, but will work in other versions as well.

Making Bubbles

One. Create a new canvas (File, New) that is in RGB mode with a white background. It needs to be sized around 400 x 400 pixels (or larger if you feel like it).

With your new canvas open, right-click and duplicate the background layer. This just makes life easy when doing our gradient - which we'll do right now. Set your foreground color to a bright, light blue and your background color to a darker shade of the same blue. Then, go to your layer styles (Layer, Styles) and click "Gradient Overlay".

The overlay you want to create has the light blue at the center and the dark blue at the edges. To do this, click the gradient drop-down and select your two-blue gradient. Then, set the style to "Radial". Finally, slide the "Scale" slider up to the right as far as it will go.

Two. Now to start our bubble. Set your foreground color to black and your background color to white. Then, grab your elliptical (circle) SHAPE tool - not the marquee tool, we want a shape. Now, hold the "Shift" key down on your keyboard while you draw the circle out. Holding the shift key down makes the circle stay perfect - not turn into a strange oval.

Right-click the layer made by your circle shape and click "Rasterize Layer". This makes all the lines smooth and crisp. Then, lower the "Fill" of the layer to 0%. It will make it look like your circle is gone - but don't worry, it's not.

Three. Ready to make this look more like a bubble? First, switch your foreground and background colors by clicking the double-ended arrow at the top right corner of your colors. Then, hit your "Gradient Overlay" option (Layer, Styles, Gradient Overlay) and turn the gradient into a white to transparent one, radial. Lower the opacity to 50%.

While you're still in the layer styles, click "Stroke". Apply a white stroke that is 1 pixel and click OK.

Four. We've nearly got a great bubble. It just needs some highlights. The first highlight is easy - use your elliptical (circle) shape tool to draw a very small circle offset from the center of your bubble. Lower its "fill" to 60%.

The second highlight requires an extra step. Draw a larger circle on your bubble, near the top left corner. Rasterize it and lower its fill to 60%. Then, grab your elliptical (circle) marquee tool to select the lower 2/3 of this new circle. Hit the backspace key on your keyboard to remove the lower 2/3. You're left with a half-moon shape and a perfect bubble.

Five. Want to make more bubbles without going through all the steps? That's easy!

First, locate the "folder" icon at the bottom of your layers palette. Click it once - it will create a "Group" folder in your layers. Now, select every layer in your palette except the two background layers and drag each of them into the Group folder. You can now click the arrow beside the Group folder to collapse it.

Right-click the Group folder and choose "Duplicate Group". With the duplicated group, you have all the pieces to your bubble in a second folder. Click Ctrl + T on your keyboard to bring up the transform handles. Hold your Shift key down on your keyboard while you drag the corner handles inward. This makes the bubble smaller without letting it lose its original shape. When you've got it sized down a bit, click the "Move" tool and click "Apply" on the warning that appears. Wa-la! Two bubbles without a lot of extra work!

Repeat this process until you have the number of bubbles you need.