colink.
Devonian Harbour Park Mini-planet (Cartoony)
Mini-planet without filter: www.flickr.com/photos/colink/5485729456/
Original source panorama: www.flickr.com/photos/colink/5485727950/
The basics of creating a mini-planet (the “Polar Panorama Effect”) in Photoshop are actually pretty easy:
1. Rotate the image 180 degrees
2. Run Filter -> Distort -> Polar Coordinates
3. Resize the image so it's a square.
Done!
The tricky part, of course, is coming up with the right source image. 360 degree panoramas look best - you want something where the left and right sides stitch together, so repeating the start and end image and then trimming appropriately will give you the right effect. Of course, some people don't mind the weird stitch that a non-360 panorama will give you, it's up to you.
The second tricky part is cleaning up afterward - cleaning up the seems if your image wasn't match properly on the left-right edges, and cleaning up the center. Haven't quite worked out the best techniques for that - with the right super-wide or fisheye panorama, the center can merge nicely - but for this image just airbrushing some green over the weird pointy bit in the center worked out pretty well.
--
For this image, I felt it was still missing a certain something (the original source image wasn't particularly inspired...), so I added a cartoony look with the Photoshop OilPaint Pixel Bender filter to give it a bit more life.
Devonian Harbour Park Mini-planet (Cartoony)
Mini-planet without filter: www.flickr.com/photos/colink/5485729456/
Original source panorama: www.flickr.com/photos/colink/5485727950/
The basics of creating a mini-planet (the “Polar Panorama Effect”) in Photoshop are actually pretty easy:
1. Rotate the image 180 degrees
2. Run Filter -> Distort -> Polar Coordinates
3. Resize the image so it's a square.
Done!
The tricky part, of course, is coming up with the right source image. 360 degree panoramas look best - you want something where the left and right sides stitch together, so repeating the start and end image and then trimming appropriately will give you the right effect. Of course, some people don't mind the weird stitch that a non-360 panorama will give you, it's up to you.
The second tricky part is cleaning up afterward - cleaning up the seems if your image wasn't match properly on the left-right edges, and cleaning up the center. Haven't quite worked out the best techniques for that - with the right super-wide or fisheye panorama, the center can merge nicely - but for this image just airbrushing some green over the weird pointy bit in the center worked out pretty well.
--
For this image, I felt it was still missing a certain something (the original source image wasn't particularly inspired...), so I added a cartoony look with the Photoshop OilPaint Pixel Bender filter to give it a bit more life.