To prove the absolute power of Photogenics once more, a technique devised by Mark Tipper, Almathera's Art Director. The tutorial is written by Tosho, Artist in Residence.
-Load a texture. For this tutorial we used the texture Wood.24deep in Graphics/Textures.
-With the Filled Circle Tool draw a disc, you can use the default yellow, and give it a large Gaussian blur. You will find it in the Paintmodes window.
-In the Alpha/Paintlayer Menu you find "Move Paintlayer to Alpha", select this. A white disc in a black background will appear in the Alpha Channel.
-Click once on the scissors icon in the Toolbox, now cut out a square slightly bigger than the yellow disc you painted earlier.
-You will now have created a wooden disc in a black background.
-And here comes the really clever bit:
Warp this disc with a setting of warpangle 180 degrees
-The image that is the result of this goes to the Second Channel.
-Select the original texture and Compose the bubble onto it.
-To make it look even better, we need to create some shadows and highlights. Click on Brightness in the Paintmodes window and chose a setting of -40 ( minus 40)
Use this to paint a shadow on the bubble and build it up to the required darkness.
-For the highlights set Brightness to +40 and paint a nice shine
-For the dropshadow we have to invert Alpha (select this in the Alpha/ Paint Layer Menu)
-With Brightness set to -40 again you can safely build up a shadow.