CREATING BUBBLES FROM A SPHERE
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You can use the Sphere template you saved in Part 1 of this tutorial to create a great bubble. Because the transparency on the working layers of the image was locked when you saved your template, this bubble can be done in a couple of minutes.

• Click on the Sphere layer of your template. Open Plugin Galaxy, press F2 and choose the #Hoods - Basic Sphere preset.
• In Manual Mode (F1) replace the Twilight layer with one of the Rainbow FX filters. (Some will work better than others for a bubble.)
  • Use Shift + Reset to restore the default Rainbow settings for the filter you choose - these will generally give you the best colors, or a better starting point.
  • Click the Shift box on the Rainbow screen to give yourself more color variations.
  • Play around with the filter's settings until you're happy with the outer colors on the circle, bearing in mind that you will be removing the central areas later, as seen below.
  • In addition, you can alter the Brightness and/or reduce the opacity (using the Blend slider under Brightness) for this layer if you want to.
• The bottom plain color layer will only affect the Rainbow colors if you change the layer blend mode or reduce the opacity of the rainbow layer. You can get some great bubbles using blend modes, so try that too.
• If you are using a template as suggested, your circle will already be perfectly smooth, as seen below, and you won't need to do anything to the Edge layer.

• The colors above are what you will get using the default Rainbow>Twirl settings. I used only the Angle slider, to rotate the the twirl to get the colors where I wanted them.

• To make your bubble partially transparent, you will need to remove as much or as little as you want to of the inner area of the sphere, as shown in the right hand example. You can use either or both of the methods below.
  • Use a heavily feathered ellipse or circle selection, positioned where you want it. Clear the selection. (Repeating Clear or Delete on a feathered selection will progressively remove more color.) Depending how big you make your selection and how much you have feathered it, this action will also slightly reduce the opacity of the outer areas of the bubble at the same time.
  • Use a soft, wide eraser brush. Reduce the opacity of the brush so you can make the removal of color gradual. Use a smaller, opaque brush to remove the very middle of the area you want cleared, including the apex of the Twirl.
• Hide your Background layer and merge the visible Highlight and Sphere layers. You can now Scale then Copy and Paste your finished bubble anywhere you want it.
• Undo the merge and use File>Save As to create a new Bubble Template. You will be able to go back to the file and change the colors of the Sphere/Bubble layer at any time, without having to repeat any of the other steps you took to get to this point.

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