How to Make Water Bubbles in Fireworks CS3

Digital water bubbles are easier to paint than you might think, even in applications like Fireworks that have more primitive paint tools. Fireworks' blend modes, opacity and quick duplication options can turn simple dots into a fountain of dimensional bubbles.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

1. Open your water source image (water bottle, water glass, fish bowl). Lock the bitmap layer with your base image in the Layer palette. You don't want to paint on it accidentally.

2. Create a new paint layer above your bitmap layer. Click on the "New Bitmap Image" layer in the Layer palette options bar.

3. Paint a dozen or more bubble shadows in a vertical row over your water area. The bubbles don't have to be in a perfectly straight line. Set the color to dark gray, the brush width to 12 to 15 pixels, the brush edge to 5 and the blend mode to "Hard Light."

4. Add bubble highlights on top of the shadows. Don't paint them in dead center; consider your light source and paint them from one of the shadow corners. Set the color to white, reduce the brush width by 3 pixels, and soften the brush edge to 15.

5. Choose the Pointer tool and click on any of the bubbles. They will be selected as a group. Option + drag the bubbles to duplicate the row. Continue until the bubbles fill the water.

6. Set the bubble layer blend mode to "Soft Light." The bubbles will begin to blend into the water. Reduce the layer opacity as necessary to improve the final blend.

Tips & Warnings

• If you have access to third party filters, such as Alien Skin Eye Candy or Impact, you can paint white round bubbles and use the inner bevel effect to make your bubbles dimensional.