spherical panorama

creating a simple spherical panorama from basic principles:

1. photograph a polished, reflective metal ball straight down
2. isolate the ball's reflection and crop the image
3. in photoshop, apply filter > distort > polar coordinates, and convert polar to rectangular
4. resize the image so that it has a 4:1 ratio (as the ball's reflection covers 360 degrees horizontal, and 90 degrees vertical)
5. extend the bottom half of the image with the clone tool to end up with a 2:1 ratio image

now that the image is ready, we can use helmut dersch's stunningly simple PTViewer java applet.

back to the experiment