Creating a globe-like image

This can be done with any camera, and most editing programs, and it is a fun effect! I found the instructions on an Elements board, and I used PSE 6 to create these in about 5 minutes!

 

It can take a not-so-hot photo and turn it into an interesting orb-like image. This was a failure attempt at getting a water drop shot:

A shot of clouds, taken from an airplane:

A sunset silhouette of a couple kissing:

Instructions:

1. Crop your image into a square. You could do a rectangle, but you won't end up with a nice round final image. I have played around with it and found that as long as it is within 50 pixels of square, it still looks OK.

2. From the filters menu, choose Distort -> Polar Coordinates. Choose the "Polar to Rectangular" option and press "OK".

3. Rotate the image 180 degrees.

4. From the filters menu, choose Distort -> Polar Coordinates. Choose the "Rectangular to Polar" option and press "OK".

Voila! You're done!

I found that it almost turns the image inside out. In the example below, the daffodil was centered in the square, and the ruffled petals ended up along the outside of the orb:

And in this one, I had an image of two sandcastles side by side and I made the center of the image in between them:

Have fun! I think this might be fun to try with a city skyline or field of flowers. I tried it on a few faces and it was just freaky, but it did make my kids laugh!