How to Create Speech Bubbles in Photoshop

Knowing how to create speech bubbles in Photoshop can be very useful as they can be used for all sorts of designs. Maybe you need a speech bubble for a comic book or manga, a pop art poster, or just for a sticker design. We’ll show you how to load, edit the appearance, and add text to speech bubble shapes that come with Photoshop.

For this tutorial, we used a bold comic font called Raging. If you’re creating a comic or pop art style design, you can find some really good color palettes on Design Bundles, such as this psychedelic color palette.

Step 1 - Load Legacy Shapes if Needed

You'll have to do this step if you’ve never loaded the legacy shapes before. Open the Shapes panel (Window > Shapes), click the menu button at the top right of the panel, and select Legacy Shapes and More.

The Legacy Shapes and More folder will be added to the end of the list in the Shapes panel.

Step 2 - Create Speech Bubble Path

Select the Custom Shape Tool (U) from the left toolbar, and choose Path from the dropdown in the Options bar at the top. Then select a speech bubble shape in the Options bar or the Shapes panel (Window > Shapes).

Note: the speech bubble shapes are located by going to the following folders, Legacy Shapes and More>All Legacy Default Shapes >Talk Bubbles.

With your speech bubble shape selected, click + drag on the canvas to create your speech bubble path.

Step 3 - Edit Speech Bubble Appearance

Add a Fill to the Speech Bubble Path

First, click the Create a New Layer icon at the bottom of the Layers panel. Then double-click on the layer name and change it to Fill. Next, select either the Path Selection Tool (A) or Direct Selection Tool (A), right-click on the canvas, and choose Fill Path.

In the Fill Path dialog, select Foreground Color. The color doesn't matter as we'll show you how to change it later.

You should now see a speech bubble filled with the Foreground color.

Add an Outline to the Speech Bubble

Create a new layer and rename it to Outline. Then open the Brushes panel (Window > Brushes), and select the brush you’d like to use to create the speech bubble outline. Change the brush size in the Brushes panel if needed.

You can modify the brush even more with the advanced brush settings in the Brush Settings panel.

Select either the Path Selection Tool (A) or Direct Selection Tool (A). Then right-click on the canvas and click Stroke Path.

Make sure Brush is selected for the Tool option in the Stroke Path dialog.

Your speech bubble should now have an outline.

Apply Layer Styles to the Outline and Fill Layers

Now we will add layer styles to the layers so we can quickly change their appearances if we want. Double-click on the Fill layer.

Make sure Preview is enabled in the Layer Style dialog and click on Color Overlay. Then click the color icon to pick a different color. Notice the change of the fill color in the actual speech bubble.

You can also add a Color Overlay for the Outline layer to change the color of the speech bubble outline.

The other layer styles can make for some fun effects, but we won’t go over those in this tutorial. After the layer styles have been added, you can always double-click on a layer style in the Layers panel to modify it.

Step 4 - Add Text

Select the Horizontal Type Tool (T), click outside the speech bubble shape, and enter your text.

Enable Free Transform (Ctrl/Cmd + T) to resize the text using the bounding box handles and move the text by clicking + dragging. Press Enter to commit the changes.

You can also change the settings in the Character and Paragraph panels to further edit the text.

Our current design is shown below.

You can take it one step further and also add layer styles to the text layer to enhance your design. We added a Color Overlay, Stroke, and Drop Shadow layer style to the text layer to create what you see in the image below.

Another option for the speech bubble text is to follow our Photoshop tutorial on creating 3D comic text! The finished design would look so awesome!