Tutorial: Reflective Bubbles
Wednesday, September 5, 2007
For my most recent work I wanted to create bubbles that would reflect my subject in a believable yet magical way. To do this I started by duplicating the main photo Layer >> Duplicate Layer.
Next I scaled the duplicate to 25% of it's original size. Edit >> Transform >> Scale. We also need to distort the duplicate. First I flipped it Edit >> Transform >> Flip Horizontal or Vertical, then I distorted it further by adjusting the perspective. Edit >> Transform >> Perspective
Still doesn't look like a bubble does it? Here comes the fun part. Select the elliptical tool (M) and draw out an area that's a perfect sphere (by holding shift). We want to get rid of everything outside of the bubble, now. So go to the to menu and choose "Select" then "Inverse" (Select >> Inverse) then press delete. You've now deleted everything on the layer that will not be in the bubble.
Press Command + D to deselect everything then Command click on the layer of the bubble. You should now have only the sphere selected.
Now, the most important part of the process, distorting your image to be a sphere by using the "Spherize" option. select Filter >> Distort >> Spherize. Use a setting of 100%.
Now, click on your color window. You want to change your foreground color to a lighter color that is close to white on the color scale. You can use a darker color if you want but to give the illusion of transparency I chose a lighter color, and accented it with darker ones in the steps that follow.
Now we're going to turn the "Sphere" layer into a more believable bubble. We do this by adjusting the "Layer Style" (Layer >> Layer Style). Select "Gradiant Overlay" from the list and activate it. Click on the Gradient window and select "Foreground to Transparent" set the opacity to "Soft Light". Reduce Opacity by 7% down to 93%. Directly to the right of that window select "Reverse" and then change the Style to "Radial". Adjust the scale to your liking.
Next go up to "Blend Options". Change the type to "Color Dodge" (or whatever looks best for your picture). At this point I also adjust the overall "Fill" of the layer to 65%.
Now select "Inner Shadow". This step helps us define the 'spheriness' (I know it's not a word, shut up) of the bubble. In the "Structure" area set the "Blend Mode" to 'Soft Light'. I used the following settings Distance >> 22px, Choke >> 54% and Size >> 45px but experiment and find what works best for you.
For my particular image I needed to create a magical aura around the bubbles. I did this by adjusting my Outer Glow and Inner Glow settings. I also duplicated my bubble several times to create more bubbles. These settings are not relevant to creating a believable bubble so I won't go over them here but the best way to figure out how to get an image like the one below is to experiment.
So there you have it, a finished bubble with a the reflection of your background image!
Posted byJon Gos at 2:18 PM
Labels: Photo Manipulation, photoshop, tutorial
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Jon Gos is a 26 year old web designer, graphic artist and photographer. Get the latest updates by following me on 
Very cool outcome, nice piece of artwork.
Do you have some other tutorial that shows like making the effect of the light that is seen in the end?
How did you create the glow effect around the bubbles? i mean, the flares?
awesome! can you plz tell us how did u create the glow effect?
This was very well done! Like the other comments previously posted I especially like the "flare-like" lighting effects around the bubbles. Do you know of any tutorials to learn how to re-create that? Thanks for your time.
Hey, guys. I'd love to tell you how to create those 'lines'but they weren't created in Photoshop. I created them in an application called Proce55ing which can be downloaded from processing.org. The apps you'll need are called Metropop, Particle and Attractor and they can all be downloaded here.
Then I screen cap them using CMD + SHIFT + 3 on my Mac and import them as layers into Photoshop. From there you can get as creative as you want with them.
Thank You very much for sharing. I have to try this!
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very COOL tutorial buuut :$ can u plz explain how did u create the effect at the end ?? :$:$$: i'm very interesed 2 know :)
quite a piece of artwork there!
hi, i love this effect, and tried it, but i got stuck :-) when i draw a circle using the elliptical tool, i get this message; "warning: no pixels are more than 50% selected. the selection edges will not be visible." appreciate any help. thanks,,,
i got it. i just set the feather to 0 px. after that i was able to draw circle. my next adventure is how to resize the duplicated bubbles.
from a physics point of view, i believe that the image wouldn't be upside-down. The bubble is convex, not concave... follow the light waves from her forehead.. they would go to the top of the bubble and point more up... if that makes sense...
I got stuck after using the marquee tool. I managed to delete the background but then i can't select the bubble again. I don't get anything spherical, the most i get is a dotted square around the selected pic :(
I never found the form when i have to nput inverse it convert them in pahts, hope u can help me ! yhsnls for your time !
Lorain
This is is an awesome effect...but I don't think I'm using the same photoshop program as in this tutorial... I cant find the same drop down options... I use "Adobe Photoshop CS"..is it the same as this tutorial?
what am I doing wrong?
If you don't have a number behind your version of CS, then you are indeed using a different version. CS3 is the version I used to make this tutorial. Everything can still be done in older versions but you'll just have to figure out the ways to get to the end result!
Hey when you use the Processing application, how do you get the background to be transparent?
Vu, I just took a 'screen cap' of my work in Processing, imported it into Photoshop and made black an alpha channel leaving nothing but the design.
Nice article.
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thank you. sincerely! thank you. it was so easy to follow. I think this was the first tutorial where i didn't pull out my hair. Hopefully you have more :)
An alternative to taking screen shots is adding this code in a key or mouse pressed function:
save("sketch"+l);
l++;
I added it to the mouse pressed part of the existing code. So every time I clicked it would save it as (sketch + l).tif in the directory your code is saved in as well as redraw the swirls. Dont forget to declare l at the beginning.
Sorry guys...I left something out of the last comment. To save as a pic you must include the file extension so it should be something like:
save("sketch.tif");
wow :o
that looks really awesome
and thankyou very mch
b/c i've needing something
like this for a collage that im working
on...GoOD JoB :D
Verry Nice Tutorial :)
Thank You,
Biju Subhash.
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Great! Thank you very much! Photoshop is very interesting program. But if you don't know Photoshop well, try http://PhotoFaceFun.com and make photo effects easier!
Thanks a lot for sharing these nice tuts with us.
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absolutely cool effect, love it I am going to give it a try, thanks!
It's Very Good man ....
I like it .....
I’ve just been trying to apply the similar effect on some of my photos that needed some effects on them. Thanks for the tutorial, it was really helpful!