How to Make Bubbles

 click on image to see larger view 

Open your photo or a new document you want to put the bubbles on. “I used a new document and filled it with color”. Make a new layer and select the circular marquee tool, make a circle and fill with a light grey. Deselect. Take the circular marquee tool and make another circle inside the grey circle you just made. Go to Select/Transform selection to make your circular selection almost to the edge of the grey circle.  Then go to edit/cut.

click on image so see larger view

 Select the eraser tool and select a soft edge brush at about 75 % opacity and go over the edge of the grey to give a transparent feel to the outline of your circle. Leaving some areas darker than other areas.

Now click on the brushes tool and select any brush. I like the brushes that look like a sponge. #36, etc. Click on white and paint a few small highlights onto the circle where the light reflection should be hitting it. Then turn your opacity down and very slightly paint some light white in half circle strokes in the circle. I also like to add some very light color too. Colors of the surroundings like the clothes, grass, etc would be good to add in the bubble to show reflections more. Remember you are adding very light amounts. You can even click on the dodge tool to highlight areas too.

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Now to make more bubbles, click on the bubble layer and go over to the move tool and click on that. Hold down the Alt key and drag another bubble out to where ever you want. Keep doing that until you get all the bubbles you want. Each bubble will be on it’s own layer so you can click on each layer and resize turn move the bubble to wherever you want!

You can also click on the liquify tool and liquify your bubbles too.

Have fun making your bubbles~and would love to see what you come up with!

click on image to see larger view

Here is a 7 minute video I put together showing the steps above. This was made using Photoshop but I imagine you can do it in any program.