Sphere Photos

[DrMarsman]

hey everyone! was just wondering if anyone knew how photos like these were done? thanks in advance

[notjustgraphics]

A milder effect similar to what you've shown can be achieved with 'Fish Eye' lenses which are available for SLR Cameras.

Alternatively, you can play with the Filter --> Distort -- > Spherize tool in Photoshop OR the Filter --> Distort --> Lens Correction.

Both will allow you to achieve a sperhical effect on a photo, but i recon some further processing will be needed to achieve the results shown in your post.

I also suspect there are plugins for Photoshop that improve the spherical distortion ability.

In playing with the idea myself, i found that if i increased the canvas size and applied the Filter --> Distort --> Spherize filter 3 or 4 times, i could get a very dramatic effect.

I noticed some loss in sharpness though, but my source image was minimal to begin with.

Regards,

Mike.

[supertackyman]

take your streetscape and turn it upside down in photoshop
then use filter > distort > polar coordinates > rectangular to polar.
make sure that you have lots of sky.
if you want the buildings to come together right make sure that you use a tripod and take a 360 degree panaorama put it together and use the above filters.

[DrMarsman]

thanks for the tips guys! i'll be having a mess around later

[NikonErik]

Looks to me like these images were captured with a camera with fisheye lens suspended above the scene looking straight down. Using the polar coordinates filter alone won't duplicate this effect very well in my opinion.

[tamlin]

Originally Posted by NikonErik

Looks to me like these images were captured with a camera with fisheye lens suspended above the scene looking straight down. Using the polar coordinates filter alone won't duplicate this effect very well in my opinion.

I'd have to agree with you there. I've tried STM's Polar Coordinates filter method on a number of images and, while it comes close to the effects shown in the attached photos, there is an obvious "join" and a little too much distortion for the result to look realistic.

[supertackyman]

ok so i did a little research and found out that these pics were done with a plugin called flexify-2 by GUI software. the plugin is $35. us.

also used was a photo stitching program called hugin
but others were also mentioned.

thanks for fueling my learning guys!!

[tamlin]

Nice find, Dave. Here's the link: Flaming Pear:Products:Flexify 2 for High Dynamic Range