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 A panorama captures great width, but a Polar Panorama adds an interesting twist to your photos. Learn how to create these funky-looking panoramas.
What is panorama?Panorama is a hugely wide-angled photo which is created by joining a number of photographs together. This kind of photograph gives you a view which has a span as wide as that seen by the human eye. What is a Polar Panorama?A Polar Panorama can make a panoramic view appear to be a separate planet. The “Polar Panorama Effect” is one of my favorite ways to process photos into unique pieces of art. It takes a panoramic (or landscape) photo and uses the Polar Coordinates filter of Photoshop CS or The Gimp to create a circular image that seems to wrap the panorama around a planet.  How do I create Polar Panoramas?
Step 1: Resize and rotate. The first thing you need to do is prepare the image for the Polar filter. You do this by stretching the height of the image so that the image is a perfect square. Select Image>Image Size from the menus. Uncheck “Constrain Properties” and set the “height” to the same value as your “width”. Next, rotate the image 180 degrees (Image>Rotate Canvas>180). Step 2: Apply the polar filter. Choose Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates from the menus and in the resulting dialogue box, select the “Rectangular to Polar” setting. (If you’re using The Gimp the command is Filters > Distorts > Polar Coords.) Step 3: Rotate and clean up. The rest is just a little digital darkroom work: rotate the planet to your liking, adjust the contrast and colours, and clean up the sky and the edges where the left and right borders of the image came together (the clone stamp and healing brush may be handy here). That’s it, you’re done! Dos and don’tsSelecting a source photo for Polar Panorama When selecting a photo to start with, keep the following things in mind: - - Panoramas or landscapes cropped to have an aspect ratio of at least 2:1 (the width should be at least two times the height) work best. Wider photos are better.
- - The bottom area (bottom 25% or so) of your photo should have very little detail (e.g. sand, asphalt, water). This area will become the centre of your planet and will be distorted the most.
- - The upper area (upper 25%) of your photo should also be light on detail – preferably just one colour (e.g. blue sky or night sky).
- - The left and the right edges of your photo should match, or come close to matching, each other (always the case for a 360 degree panorama).
- - The horizon must be exactly horizontal. Since the left and right edges of your photo will be joined, if they are at different heights your planet will have a big crack in the surface. (Again, not an issue for a properly executed 360 degree panorama.)
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