Here is a great tutorial that was submitted by Tanmay on creating a digital bubble effect. In this tutorial, we’ll walk through the process involved in creating digital bubble effects using channels and the guassian blur filter.
1. Create a new file (237 x 255 pixel wide)
2. Fill the background with black color.
3. Now, create a new layer by pressing shift+ctrl+n together.
4. Press ‘M’ to select Elliptical Marquee tool.
5. Create different circles as shown in the figure. When you are drawing circles, press shift to draw multiple circles.
6. Now select blue color (R:0, G:0, B:255) and press alt+backspace to fill the blue color in the circles.
7. Keep the selection active and click on channels palate.
8. Click on New Channel Button to create new alpha channel.
9. Fill the selected part with white.
10. Now press Ctrl+D to deselect.
11. Now go to Filter>Blur>Gussian Blur and set the radius around 4.5-4.8
12. Click Ok.
13. Now, return to main layer.
14. Go to select>Load Selection>Alpha 1 and click ok.
15. Change the blue color to white by pressing x.
16. Fill the selection with white.
17. You can now see bubbles.
