How to do some crazy stuff in Photoshop (Part 1)

Say you were bored, and wanted to do something on your computer. Internet? Already read the good stuff. Games? Beat 'em all. So, nothing to do?

Wrong. You could create planets.

In this tutorial, I'll show you how to photoshop any 360 degree-ish panorama into a planet. Like so:


If you need a panorama, head over to Wikimedia Commons. There are a ton of good, 360 degree panoramas there to choose from.
There are a few things to look for:

• Your picture should be 360 degrees, or should match at the sides. Otherwise, your planet will have a big cliff in it.
• The high the quality, the better.
• Try to find a panorama with an empty top and bottom, like sky and ground. These parts of your picture will become very distorted.

Once you've found a panorama that fits these standards, like this one: You only have 4 things to do.

1. In Photoshop, make the image square. It will be distorted, but don't worry. So, the image above now looks like this:
2. Now, rotate the image 180 degrees. It should look like this:
3. Lastly, go to Filters > Distort and apply the "Polar Coordinates" filter. In the pop up, set it to "Rectangular to Polar". It should now look like this:
4. This step is optional, but if you want to clean up any breaks, just use the clone tool and blur. Now you're done!

With these 4 simple steps, you can create planets. Here are some more samples: