Creating Word Balloons Photo Comics

I have a technical question. I always put my text at the side/bottom of the picture. I'd like to start experimenting with word balloons. Does anyone know how to make them? I got a program called "Comic Book Creator" but its pretty elaborate and I haven't the time to read the manual let alone play with it. Thanks.

I use photoshop. The custom shape tool in photoshop can be used for text bubbles, thought bubbles and other stuff.
But you need to search for the right plugins online.

Try Comic Life. It's what I mostly use.

I haven't used a programme that creates speech balloons if there is one, what I do is use the Text Tool available in most programmes like Paint Shop Pro or Adobe etc. I compose the text then place it on the picture to the size and place I want then cut the area out, replace the text in the space left and add the border and speech direction lines with 'Line'.
In fact in P.S.P later version there is a preset speech balloon included in the tools,
But someone may know a simpler method.
Helen

I always take the lazy approach when possible. I forget where I found this file of balloons suitable for various manipulations.

IIRC, they don't upscale quite as well as I'd like, but 98% of the time, I just work with the original balloons in my stuff,

There's an example of it in use here, in the lower left panel. In the original, Jill only had a one-word response with a tiny balloon, but I needed her to say more, so I pasted in a bigger one. It stands out a little more than I'd like, but works OK.

Edit: Hmm, it won't let me upload the file in JP2 or PSPImage format, which have the balloons as layers against a "blank" background....

I too use Comic Life but it's pretty horrid in many ways. It takes quite a lot of manual tweaking to get a good result.