Creating a mini planet

Playing a bit more with PhotoShop and while I type this PhotoShop is busy in the background, resizing my panorama - in preparation for my mini planet!

Definitely not perfect, but a jolly good first try!

First of all, create a panorama:

• Open all the photos to be used in the pano in PhotoShop
• Select all
• File - Automate - Photomerge
• In the Photomerge dialog box, click Auto under Layout; tick the Blend Images Together and the Vignette Removal boxes
• The center column will be empty, click Add Open Files
• Click OK
• Wait for the magic to happen.............be patient!!!!!!
• Get the Crop tool and tidy up the pano
• Make the image smaller and save as a jpeg

Now, create the planet:

• Use a 360 degrees panorama
• Re-size and rotate - prepare the image for the Polar Filter by stretching the height of the image so that the image is a perfect square:
  Image - Image size - uncheck Constrain Properties - set the height and width to the same value
• The above takes quite a long time as we are working with huge files
• Rotate the image 180 degrees
  Image - rotate canvas - 180
• This takes forever too!
• Apply the Polar Filter:
  Filter - Distort - Polar Coordinates
  In the dialog box: select the 'Rectangular to Polar' setting
• Rotate and clean up:
  Rotate the planet to your liking
  Adjust the contrast and colours
  Clean up sky and edges
• All done!

What I now know:
Choose a panorama with lots of blue sky at the top, with nothing 'touching' the edge (for example the trees) and choose a photo with 'empty' space in front, for example lawn - this will form a nice round, green circle in the middle 

A good tutorial if you get stuck