How to Make Water Bubbles in Photoshop CS3

Enhance the realism of water in your digital art by adding water bubbles. You could try to paint the individual bubbles and add shading and highlights, but that could take forever. If you want to save time, you can use Photoshop's custom brush features to paint dozens of bubbles at once.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Open the image with your water source. You can use a water glass, bottled water or even an aquarium.

2. Create a custom brush to paint your bubbles. Select the brush tool. Use the tool options palette to set the brush size to 3 to 9 pixels (depending on the bubble size) and the hardness to 100 percent.

3. Open the brushes palette (choose "Brushes" from the Window menu). Make sure all of the checks are deselected and click on "Brush Tip Shape". In the shape options check "Spacing" and adjust the slider until the spacing is between 350 to 500 percent. If you want a more random effect, check "Scattering" and set the scattering options to 300 percent on both axes with a count of 1.

4. Paint your bubbles with white as the foreground color on a new layer. Your strokes will create strings of bubbles. If you want a different effect, undo and change the brush settings. Vary the brush size to create different bubble sizes.

5. Add dimension to the bubbles. Use the "Emboss" layer style with a small offset (experiment to get the effect you want). Change the layer blend mode to "Hard Light" to blend them into the water. Add a Brightness/contrast adjustment layer to reduce the bubble brightness.

Tips & Warnings

• Even though it looks like a default, "Brush Tip Shape" is actually an option separate from the checklist settings underneath. You need to click on the words "Brush Tip Setting" to make the shape and spacing options appear.
• Increase the sense of dimension by painting bubbles on different layers. Change the layers' emboss settings and transparency to add depth.