Tutorial – Create water bubbles

I was seeing wallpapers on Smashingmagazine and this wallpaper got my attention (because of those water bubbles). I went ahead and tried to create those bubbles myself. After playing with some blending options I successfully created them and now I am going to show you how to make them.

Note: I really don’t know how the original designer made them, but I am showing you how I made water bubbles that are looking very similar to original.

We are going to use the same picture so that you can understand easily.

Step 1:
Select Elliptical Marquee Tool and draw a small circle. Fill it with white color #FFFFFF

Step 2:
Go to Layer > Layer Style > Inner Glow (and use these details)

Blending Mode: Normal
Opacity: 75%
Color: #FFFFFF
Choke: 0
Size: 8

Step 3:
Change the layer mode to Multiply. Now you should see like this.

Now it needs to have some shiny/glossy effect to look more like a bubble.

Step 4:
With the Elliptical Marquee Tool selected, Ctrl + Click the bubble layer to select it and choose the “Substract From Selection” option.

Now cut the circle in “oval shape” so that it should look like this

Step 5
Go to Select > Modify > Contract > Enter value 2 (you can change the value according to the size of your circle – in my case it is 2)

It will reduce the selection up to 2 pixels and now your circle should look like this

Now fill the selection with white color #FFFFFF

Step 6
Go to Filter > Blur > Guassian Blur > Enter value 2

Step 7(additional formatting)
You can now draw another small circle inside the main circle and apply the same filter on it, it will add another shiny corner on the bubble, as shown here.

After applying some other brushes that I have, here is my final water bubble ready.

I hope you find the tutorial easy to follow. Please feel free to ask if you are having any trouble following this tutorial.

Good luck