How to Turn Your Panoramas Into Photographic Planets

Super Mario Galaxy was perhaps one of the best examples of what a good Wii game could be. It was simple to pick up, a solid Mario platformer, and above all, visually beautiful. Perhaps the coolest parts of the game were the small planets from which Mario jump, flew and ran to, giving the game a unique charm and sense of whimsy that was simply a joy to play. Did we mention that it looked damn cool?

What's cooler is that you can apply that exact effect to your own photos and panoramas. Perhaps it's a beautiful landscape, or a modest shot of your front lawn — either way, it'll take you less then five minutes to turn that regular old photo into a panoramic planet of your own.

Creating your own miniature panoramic planet is actually quite easy. All you need is a copy of Photoshop or the free alternative GIMP, and of course, a suitable photo. Not just any panorama will make this work, however, so you need to keep a few criteria in mind. An aspect ratio of at least 2:1 will work best, with wider photos looking the most impressive. Because the goal is to create a photographic sphere, a 360 ° panorama is also ideal.

Our test image.

Open your photo in either GIMP or Photoshop and alter the width so that it's equal to the height. You might need to turn off "Constrain Portions" for this to work. Once completed, rotate your photo 180* so that it appears upside down.

Luckily, creating a planet only requires one filter. From the Filter menu, choose Distort > Polar Coordinates, and ensure that "Rectangular to Polar" is selected. Allow the results to render, and marvel at your handiwork.

Depending on the quality of your photo, you might need to touch a few things up. For example, if the horizon of your photo isn't perfectly straight, or you didn't use a full, 360 ° panorama, you might find the point at where the two ends meet is uneven. Use of the clone tool and other masking options can help to clean up the seams, and any colour differences can be equalized as well.

In our case, the final product looks something like this:

Pretty nifty, huh? The trick to good results is experimenting with different styles of photos. A photo with few top and bottom details — a blue sky or a sandy beach, for example — tend to work best, because of the way in which the image is distorted. This also helps in hiding inconsistencies at the seams when anything other than a full panorama is used.

Now, get shooting and show us what you can produce!

Images via Flickr users Schtumple and San Diego Shooter.

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