I saw over on Friend-of-the-Blog Jeff Revell’s site a link to a gallery of panoramic photos turned into surreal planets. And Geographic Composition contributor Mike Palmer also used this technique for last Friday’s submission. I had seen the same tutorial he mentioned a while back but never tried it for myself until now.

So, as a quick break from the Profile Reflections, here’s what I did using my Rochester Pano from the other week:

1. Create a panoramic photo by either stitching together a number of shots or by cropping a landscape image. Be sure to maintain a minimum of 2:1 width to height ratio.

2. Make sure that both the sky and the bottom section of the image match pretty well to avoid a really noticeable seam.

3. Make sure the horizon line is perfectly, well, horizontal. This, again, helps everything line up easier.

4. With your pano open, go to Image>Image Size and uncheck the box next to “contrain proportions” and make your height the same value as the width. Click “Ok.”

5. Rotate your canvas 180 degrees.

6. Go to Filter>Distort>Polar Coordinates and select the “Rectangular to Polar” option and click “Ok.”

7. Rotate the image to your liking. I just flipped it back 180 degrees.

8. Clean up any evidence of the seam. I actually replaced the bridge on the right side with the one on the left to make it look better and then did a bunch of patching and healing and masking in the center and along the seam at the bottom of the planet to make it all fit.

9. Because my pano wasn’t shot properly in the first place, my sky was a mess. So, I simply made a mask of the planet and placed a better sky behind it.

It’s a really cool idea and one I’m definitely going to try again. Give it a try and let me know what you come up with!

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