Creating a Dramatic Polar Panorama Effect

We have seen plenty of polar panorama photographs in the earlier post. This simple tutorial will show how to use the polar coordinates filter to create a polar panorama effect and also other cool tricks to enhance the beauty further.

Preview of Final Image

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You will need to have a panorama photo or something that is cropped to a rectangle similar to what I have below. I am using the Paradise Bay from ShutterStock.

First thing we need to do is to make the panorama image able to tile seamlessly in horizontal manner. Go to Image > Canvas Size and increase the document’s width by another 500px.

Pick two portions of the panorama image where they have some similarities. In the case below, the two circled mountains have similar heights where we can try to blend them together.

Duplicate the portion circled on the right and flip it horizontally. Use the Eraser tool to blend in to the circled mountain on the left. You will get something similar to mine below.

You will get something similar to mine below.

Go to Image > Image Rotation > Flip Canvas Vertical.

Go to Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates. Select the Rectagular to Polar option and hit OK.

Go to Image > Image Size. Uncheck the Constrain Proportions. Set its width to be the same as its height.

Cool isn’t it? Many people will stop at this point, but let us see how we can add more stuffs to make the whole work looks more interesting.

The center of the polar panorama image looks pretty weird. So I downloaded the Blue Water from ShutterStock and use it to cover the center area.

Go to Filter > Liquify. Pick the Bloat tool and enter the settings as shown. Click and hold the Bloat tool at the center of the blue water till you get a similar effect to mine.

Create a new layer above the polar panorama image. Use the Color Picker to pick the color of the sky and paint around the border using the Brush tool with Soft Rounded type.

Now let us add some animals to this little planet. I downloaded the Orca Killer Whale from ShutterStock and position it near to the center of document. You can reduce the opacity of the whale image to get a better adjustment.

Make a Layer Mask on the whale layer and hide the unwanted portions using Brush tool with black color.

Repeat the same steps for more polar animals and this is what we will get!

Lastly, I applied a Dramatic effect from the Topaz Labs plugin to get my final image. Hope you have enjoyed this tutorial. Thanks for reading!