Polar Coordinates:
Photoshop Effect Creates Unique Planets

Ever want to turn your favourite streetscapes,
city panoramics or countryside landscapes
into their own little planets?

Polar Coordinates, under Photoshop's Distort filter, helps you create neat planet panoramas, even in HDR.



It's a popular digitally-manipulated artform these days and not too difficult to perform. In just a few steps, thanks to Photoshop effects tutorials, you go from a simple panorama to a fish-eye look of a mini world.

Broad Street, Sussex, N.B., Canada

Main Street, Sussex, N.B., Canada

Polar panoramas may be made from a series of photos run through Photoshop's autostitch function (above), but you can also take a single photograph and turn it into its own planet (below).

Smith Creek #1 covered bridge in Roachville, N.B., Canada

What type of composition works well for small planets?

Look for consistent details in the tops and bottoms. In other words, skies that are one colour and fields/water/asphalt with little variations in patterns. Also, the horizon sides must match because Polar Coordinates joins the right with the left. This becomes a challenge when working with many buildings.

Click here to learn how to create your own planet (page opens in new window).

The photo below of a lone tree in a field in the winter worked well.

As did this of a housing project in Saint John, N.B., Canada, because it contained a solid blue sky.

The next two polaramas are from Fredericton, the provincial capital of New Brunswick, Canada. The first is a city panoramic of the shoreline. The second shows the famous Mactaquac Dam, a few minutes north of the city.

We'll finish this page with two more polar panoramas from the Sussex area. The first is a stitching panorama of a mural on a building and the second is a dandelion field and a sole fence post.

Return from Polar Coordinates to more cool Photoshop tutorials.