speech balloons in PS - a mini-tutorial :)

[astridv]

jwaneeta and I were talking about ways to make comic speech balloons in Photoshop. I used to know a way of doing that involving paths, but I have forgotten the details, which is all the better because I just discovered an even easier way. Posting it here because you never know, there might be other artists on the flist who find this info useful... and I can tag it for myself in case I forget again.

This is so quick and easy, it won't even need a cut:
-Switch to selection tool, set it to 'ellipse'
-add the little arm using the polygonal-lasso
-right-click on the selection: you'll get a drop-down menu which should include the options 'fill area' and 'fill contour' [or 'fill' and 'stroke']. Fill the area with white, the contour with black (you can select the pixel width) and voilà, speech balloon.

(Okay, some of you are probably saying "D'uh" right now but I really did not know this!) Hm, I think I'll use elliptical balloons for "Fear of the Dark"...

Comments

[mitzi007.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the tip! I didn't know that.

[jwaneeta.livejournal.com]

For some mad reason my version of Photoshop (7.0) doesn't seem to have fill contour. Fill area, yes, fill contour, no. I think. Maybe I'm just blind, sigh. I'll try again tomorrow.

I want to find it because this sounds great and super-easy. Thanks for the passing it on, anyway!

[rahirah]

Polygon-lasso! D'oh! I knew to make the balloon with the ellipse, and fill and stroke it, but I used to try to make the pointers with the line tool. It wasn't pretty.

[friendshipper.livejournal.com]

That's how I do mine, except that I use the fill and stroke commands (from the Edit menu) when I've drawn the balloon. I didn't even know about "fill contour"; it might be faster than my way! *makes mental note*

Edit: Ahhh, after fiddling around in Photoshop and re-reading your instructions more closely, I think that "fill area" and "fill contour" are actually the Fill and Stroke on my version of Photoshop. But I just realized that, as long as your word balloons don't overlap, all you have to do is fill them (Fill Contour) and then you can use Layer Styles to put the stroke onto the whole word balloon layer! This makes it easier to edit word balloons later without having to redraw the balloon. (The bane of my existence, because I keep changing dialogue and having to redo the balloon, or moving it and needing the speech tag to point in a different direction, or something.) I'm not sure if this would be useful to anyone else but me, but I've been doing mine the same way for so long that I hadn't even thought of looking for other ways to do it 'til reading your post!

[astridv.livejournal.com]

I'm using version 6.0 and it's in German, so possibly the same features are just called differently in your version? Check out friendshipper's comment below: she uses the commands Fill and Stroke. I'm gonna make an ETA to this post.

[jwaneeta.livejournal.com]

Aha! Yay, success! I couldn't find Fill and Stroke in the dropdown, because I still had the selection tool. When I used the oval tool, the dropdown had them both.

Excellent! Thanks so much for the tip, it's going to save me a lot of time and aggravation. :D

[astridv.livejournal.com]

Weird, with my version it worked while still switched to selection tool. Maybe a vs6.0 specific thing. Anyway, glad to hear you got it to work.

I used to draw the ellipses by hand. This should make things a lot easier.

[astridv.livejournal.com]

I think that "fill area" and "fill contour" are actually the Fill and Stroke on my version of Photoshop

Yeah, my version is in German and sometimes those descriptions don't translate verbatim. The next version I get, I'll make certain to install in English.

But I just realized that, as long as your word balloons don't overlap, all you have to do is fill them (Fill Contour) and then you can use Layer Styles to put the stroke onto the whole word balloon layer! This makes it easier to edit word balloons later without having to redraw the balloon.

Sounds interesting - I have no idea what Layer Style is, but I should be able to figure it out with the help of my trusty PS book.

Usually when I need to change a balloon, I just select it and then use 'transform' to pull it into the shape I need. (Well, again, I don't know what 'transformieren' is called in the English version.)