December 20, 2007

Mini Planets


I first saw these being made 2 years ago off of several Flickr page groups, and now this simple panorama photo + Photoshop filters process has blown up into a phenomenon that challenges digital artists to create many different styles at high resolutions with seamless stitching. Click image above to see one such collection.

Here's Alexandre Duret-Lutz awesome Flickr archive.

Rob Park has a tutorial here, using a series of different tools and plugins to create "straighter" panoramas like these. This has gradually formed into its own artform, and many are adding more artful style and sophistication to the concept.

Converting the panorma into a planet can be done in several different ways. Dirk Paessler posted a tutorial showing how you can use the "polar coordinates" filter of your photo editor (The Gimp has one), and of course Photoshop has one too.

Other sources include Create Your Own Planets with a little help of this Flickr group tutorial. This group pool also has awesome samples of what type of world you can create. The Polar Panoramas group has even more samples to go through. Enjoy!

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