In this Text Effect Quickie, we’ll create an easy to use layer style that will quickly transform ordinary text into bubble styled font, perfect for use in underwater scenes.

This is a Text Effect Quickie — a tutorial that teaches an effect quickly, yet is an effective technique that can be used time and time again. If you’re looking for advanced tutorials, be sure to check out the rest of our Photoshop Tutorials on Tutorial9!

What We’re Making

This tutorial will show you how to produce text that will appear as shown in the graphic below. You can also download the Free Bubble Effect Layer Style if you’d like.

Bubble Text Effect made in Photoshop

Before getting started, you may want to find a suitable font for this effect, as not all fonts will necessarily look right when this style is applied. You want a font with rounded edges — no sharp corners.

Some fonts that should work well include:

Once you’ve downloaded a font that appeals to you, head on to the next part of the tutorial!

Step 1 - Background

This effect really works great on top of dark backgrounds, but will also work fine on lighter backgrounds (so long as it’s not too light, as the effect itself makes things brighter). Go ahead and create a new document, and fill in the background with a color of your choice (or #2d3134 if you’d like to borrow our background color).

Step 2 - Set the Type

Using the Horizontal Type Tool, set some text in the document with your font you downloaded earlier. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy, but make sure you set your Text Color to White.

Set this layers blending mode to Darken. This will make your text disappear from the canvas.

Step 3 - Setting Up the Style

Go into your text layers Blending Options (Right Click Layer > Blending Options).

Apply the layer effects shown below, making any modifications as needed.

Drop Shadow

A Drop Shadow helps create contrast between our text and the imagery behind the text. It’s not necessary for the effect, but does help over busy backgrounds.

Bubble Effect Drop Shadow for added contrast

Inner Shadow

Inner Shadow for the Bubble Text Effect

Inner Glow

These values may need to be adjusted to compensate for the size of your text. Larger text may require a larger size in the “Elements” settings.

Inner Glow for the Bubble Text Effect

Bevel and Emboss

This Layer Effect may also require some adjustments to compensate for text size.

Bevel for the Bubble Text Effect

Satin

Satin for the Bubble Text Effect

Gradient Overlay

For our Gradient Overlay, we’re using a White to Transparent gradient.

Gradient Overlay for the Bubble Text Effect

Bubble Text Effect Layer Style

Touchups

This layer style works very well on more than just text. You may want to try using the Ellipse Shape Tool to add some bubbles surrounding the text, and applying the style to them as well.

Add Bubbles

You can also add in some smaller trailing bubbles with a small 1-3 pixel white brush rising to the surface if you intend to use this effect in an underwater scene. If you’d like to see some other touch-ups I added to our final version, feel free to download the Bubble Text Effect PSD!

Download the Layer Style

Now What?

You’ve reached the end of this post. Seeing you made it this far means you might be interested in these related articles and resources: