Interesting Photoshop Tutorial: Circle World

Front of Hostel

I found an interesting set of instructions floating around flickr today. I'm posting them here as a short tutorial.

How to Make a Panorama (long version)
- Use a tripod.

- Align tripod and camera with the horizon as much as you can.

- When taking pictures remember that you should leave some over lap between each photo. I find that 1/4-1/3 of the fram e is enough. This will give you a set of pictures that can easily be stitched.

- Use the manual settings of your camera. One side of the sky is *Always* brighter than the other because of the sun. If you let the camera decide the settings, they will change as you rotate towards and away from the sun. The photos won't match. Using the manual settings forces them to stay the same and the change from darker to brighter will match and look natural.

- To stitch the photos together, I can recommend Autostitch, it's easy to use and (still) free of charge.

- If you want to use the panorama for a Planet Shaped Amazing Circle, the panorama must be exactly 360 degrees (fudging 359 or 361 will leave an ugly line). It should also be exactly horizontal.

- Also for making a Planet Shaped Amazing Circle - experiment with adding more photos above or below the panorama. Below seems good to me especially when you are standing in a spot with few interuptions that look weird when the image gets stretched. Adding a second row for the panorama lessens the amount that the photo will need to be stretched to make it square later, less stretching is better.

Create Your Own Planet Shaped Amazing Circle.

- First create a Full 360 Degree Panorama.

- Load the file in Photoshop.

- Change the Image Size. Uncheck 'Constrain Proporties' and set the width to the match the height to create a square. You can experiment with different ratios later.

- Rotate the image 180 degrees. Note: if you skip the rotation of 180 degrees you'll get the Wheel Shaped Amazing Circle, which is also cool. Try making both.

- Use the 'Polar Coordinates' filter (Rectangular to Polar) to create the final product.

These are pretty interesting and really easy to make especially if you already use autostitch. I'll probably be making a few of these over the next while. I hope that you enjoy making these and then looking at them.
-Gary