The formation of gas bubbles in a liquid is of both academic and industrial interest, and sets the initial conditions for the hydrodynamics, heat and mass transfer as well as chemical reactions from a dispersed gaseous phase to the liquid phase in industrial processes. The literature on bubble formation from a single submerged orifice is large in both Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids. Despite the numerous theoretical and experimental investigations, the mechanisms of bubble growth and detachment remain far from fully understood. The study of bubble formation at micro-scale and especially in the presence of a lateral liquid flow field is still very limited. This is the topic for consideration in the present paper. In particular, this study compares both qualitatively and quantitatively the formation of bubbles at micro- and macro-scales. A high-speed digital camera (up to 10,000 images s(-1)), a micro-Particle Image Velocimetry (mu-PIV) system and also a macro-PIV (PIV) were employed in this work, to measure the velocity flow field at micro- and macro-scales. At macro-scale, experiments were conducted in a square Altuglas column of 0.1 m filled with water or viscous Emkarox solutions using different orifice sizes and various gas flowrates. A rotating device above the orifice in the column was used to impose a shear flow on the forming bubble at the orifice. At micro-scale, different sizes of micro-reactors (600 and 1000 mu m) and different micro-devices were employed to compare the mechanism of bubble formation. A correlation based on dimensionless numbers was proposed to estimate the formed bubble volume at micro- and macro-scales in order to reveal the main factors governing the formation mechanisms. (C) 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.