You can have a lot of fun adding comic style speech bubbles or balloons to your photos and it’s quite easy when using the program Photofiltre. Manipulating photos this way, has been done for ages, which borrows elements of comic books and combines them with real pictures. Often the end result can be quite humorous by putting the words into the mouths of people who would not normally be expected to be saying these words, so the effect is often profound. The technique of using speech balloons has been used by political satirist for ages as it has more visual impact than captions. Not always is the intention comedy, it can be any message from serious to satire.
Read more of the history of speech bubbles here.
Styles of speech bubbles.
There are many different styles of speech bubbles or balloons, but the examples above are popular basic styles quite often used.
The style of bubble or balloon used can be used to reflect emotion, such as surprise or shock, and the feeling of dread such as when something bad goes wrong. 
Creating basic speech bubble balloons in Photofiltre.
Example of basic speech bubble. White background, black outline.
The Ellipse Tool
Use the ellipse tool to create an oval shape then drag it into position.
Position the mouse cursor inside the selected area and right click to bring up the menu, then select Stroke and Fill. Check the Fill box and select Color: White and Style: Solid. Make sure the stroke box is unchecked.
Click Ok and the selected area will be coloured white
Now unselect that area using the unselect button(as seen in picture)
The next step is to create is the tail, this can be easily created using the Polygon Tool(as pictured above) pointing towards the persons mouth.
Use Stroke and Fill to colour the tail white. Then deselect this area.
Select the Magic Wand Tool and click inside the speech bubble. This will select the outside contour of the entire speech bubble including the tail.
Check the Stroke box, select Color: Black, Width: 2
Make sure the Fill box is unchecked. Click OK
The bubble and tail will now have a black border.
Adding text into the bubble
Select the Text Tool from the menu to bring up the text dialogue box.
Type in your text, and choose font, text size, alignment, bold italics etc.
Position your text into place with the cursor, inside the bubble.
Once your satisfied with the text, click on the hide selection button to validate.
Completed basic speech bubble.
Creating other styles of speech bubbles.
The square bubble.
The square text bubble is created in the same way as the round bubble/balloon, but using the Rounded Rectangle Tool instead.
Procedure:
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Create rectangle with Rounded Rectangle Tool
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Fill it white
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Create the tail with Polygon Tool, fill it white.
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Use the Magic Wand to select the all the white area of the bubble.
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Use Stroke and Fill tool to create black border around the bubble.
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Add text
Cloud Style Bubble.
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Use the Ellipse tool to create a series of circles to form the cloud shape and then filling each circle white as you go.
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Create the tail with the Polygon tool and fill with white.
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Use the Magic Wand to select white area.
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Put black border around the outside with Stroke and Fill tool
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Add text
With a few small circles this can also become a thought cloud….
Creating a surprise style bubble.
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Use Polygon tool to make a star shaped balloon.
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Right mouse click to bring up menu and choose stroke and fill
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Fill shape with white and choose Stroke to make a border.
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Add text
Creating a curved tail
The curved tail adds some refinement and looks a lot nicer than the standard triangular tail created with the polygon tool.
Creating the curved tail takes a little more effort and unfortunately Photofiltre doesn’t have an elegant way to create the curve for the tail. BUT…I’ve found the easiest way to make the curve tail shape is by using two circles…like this:
- Create a large white circle and a small elliptical black circle inside
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Copy this selected curved section to the clipboard.
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Now goto Edit>Undo(or control z on the keyboard) to remove the small line and two circles.
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Unselect the remaining curve.
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Create the main bubble body.
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Edit>Paste the curved section. Move it into position
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Right click on the mouse to bring up the menu.
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Click on Transform>Free
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Rotate and position the curve part so it looks right.
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Then finish the job by adding the black border and then text. Done.
Special effects
Progressive Contour
You can add some glowing colour to the inside border of the bubble by using progressive contour rather than having a plain background. Whether you like this or not, is a matter of individual taste and depends on the type of pictures you are working with.
How to add progressive contour:
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While you have the area selected by using the Magic Wand, add the progressive contour effect but do this before you add the outside border.
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From the main menu choose Filter>Stylize>Progressive Contour
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Choose colours and width
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Add border and text.
Drop Shadows
Another effect you can use is Drop Shadow.
The drop shadow effect looks good with certain backgrounds, once again, it’s up to you if you like it or not.
Adding drop shadow:
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Use the Magic Wand to select the bubble, then from the main menu select Filter>Stylize>Drop Shadow
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Select position of shadow with X & Y coordinates. Click OK when done.
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Add in border and text.
Saving a bubble pattern.
It’s a great idea to save your speech bubble as a pattern for future use once you have created it, especially if it is a more complex style, as this will save time in the future.
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The best time to save a shape is before you add borders, text or any special effects.
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From the main menu select: Selection>Save Shape.
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Name your shape and click OK, the shape is now saved
Flipping the Bubble.
You might find that when you are using a saved bubble pattern you would like flip it around so that the tail is pointing on the opposite side.
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Load the shape: Selection>Load Shape
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Fill the shape with white
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Copy shape to the clipboard: Edit>Copy
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Edit>Undo Stroke and Fill to remove this bubble
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Hide Selection
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Paste it back in using: Edit>Paste
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Right click mouse, choose Transform>Flip Horizontal
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Image is flipped, you can proceed with special effects, border and text.
Yes, I know. Flies don’t talk.
FONTS
There are lots of interesting comic style fonts available for free if you wish to add a bit more style. Sure, you can use the Comic Sans font that comes with Windows, it’s ok, but a bit boring.
Take a look at these….
These fonts are free to download from many of the font websites.
There’s a good selection of comic style fonts to download at the bancomicsans website in alphabetical order. There are lots to choose from, so what are you waiting for?
Final Tips.
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Make every speech bubble different. Classic comic artists often drew every speech bubble a different shape and size, this made things more interesting and less boring and predictable. Also other things like the frame sizes are different and contain odd angles for greater effect. It’s the nature of comics that nothing is predictable..not even the artwork. So apply some of these principles when adding speech bubbles into pictures.
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When using shapes you’ve created and saved previously, a way to make them look different is by simply shrinking and growing them, rather that creating an entirely new shape. This is also a fantastic way of making the bubble larger to accommodate larger or more text.
Photofiltre is free to download and use. It’s a good honest photo editing program and does not contain any advertising or annoyances like that. This is one of the best free graphics program available for Windows and many people are using it. It’s light on system resources so you don’t need huge amounts or RAM or a fast computer to run. :-)
Photofiltre download page here (1.6Mb)
And…as they say. THAT’S ALL FOLKS 
—oooOOOooo—
Tags: comic style, Photofiltre, speech balloons, speech bubbles
photo credit: orangeacid
