How To: Create Little Planets

The final image - London skyline as a little world. This image suits the technique well and almost has a cartoon like quality with the exaggerated skyscrapers seeming to grow out of a small planet.

I have always liked those round creations which look like your own little worlds, and wanted to try to make one so I finally did by following a simple tutorial on the internet.

Starting image - a panorama of the London skyline made by stitching four images together in Photoshop

Here is a simple step-by-step guide of how I made a little world, using the Polar Coordinates filter in Photoshop

First, we will need to choose the image to work with. Ideally, a little world is supposed to be a 360 panoramic shot, but it is not absolutely necessary. The trick is to get the edges of your image to match perfectly when they are connected in the end.

Open the selected image in Photoshop. I had a panoramic shot of London which I made by stitching four images together.

Flip the image upside down using Image > Image Rotation > Flip Canvas Vertical. Now we have an upside down image:

Go to Image > Image size and set the image width to the same number as its height. Click ok. Now we have a square upside down image.

Go to Filter > Distort  > Polar Coordinates and choose Rectangular to Polar: Click OK.

Crop the image as required and use the healing brush to blend in any edges where the image joins.