Tip #80: It's a Small World

On Saturday, I posted the following image -- a panorama on a sphere:



Yesterday, someone asked me how I did it. So, here goes.

1. I shot a nine-frame panorama, overlapping each frame by about 20%. Any camera will work, but in this case I used one of my DSLR's. I took the images handheld, but a tripod might have been better. A full circle panorama might have been better for the spherical projection, but it is not a requirement.



2. I stitched the 9 frames together with Microsoft ICE (Tip #34) and saved the new image.



3. I loaded the panorama into GIMP. Photoshop would also have worked.



4. I re-scaled the image proportions to a square (5000 pixels x 5000 pixels) with Image->Scale Image.



5. I transformed the image with Filter->Distorts->Polar Coordinates



6. I cleaned up my planet with a healing brush.



7. I left the corners untouched for a dramatic round presentation on my black backgrounded blog.
   
   
8. I saved the new image, naming it "Austeroid."

Text not enough? Here's a Youtube video that shows the Photoshop version of the transformation.

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