I’ve seen a lot of “tiny planet” photos on the web as of late, mostly via reddit. After some quick Google searches, I finally figured out how to create one via Photoshop. Finding a photo of mine that worked well, and being relatively pleased with the results, I put together a simple tutorial.

Note: If you hop on your phone and search your app store for “tiny planet” apps, you can find something that will automate this process for you. Anyway, on with the tutorial! (I do assume a certain level of experience with Photoshop. I gloss over a lot of the simple things.)

Step 1: This photo was taken in the spring at sunrise. The sky was clear, which made this process a little easier. After selecting my image, I did a little RAW editing until I was happy with the photo. Then I brought it into Photoshop for cropping.

Step 2: In previous attempts at this, I found out that if the end edges are mirrored, the final result will be a bit better and look seamless. (See Step 5 for an example). To do this, I copied the left side of the photograph, flipped it horizontally, moved it to the edge, and masked it out. I took a screen shot of the outline to give you a better example.

Step 3: Once I was happy with the edges, I made the image square. In this case that required me to make the height the same size as the width. Now equal, I flipped the canvas vertically.

Step 4: With the canvas flipped, go to Filter > Polar Coordinates and make sure “Rectangular to Polar” is selected. Once selected, confirm the changes.

Step 5: If it wasn’t for me fixing the edges in Step 2, the image would have a hard visible edge when the image wrapped. (I also rotated the image at this point)

Step 6: The edge is now seamless, but we have some horrible streaks going on around the edges. You’re more than welcome to crop the image square and call it a day, but I wanted to fix those edges so I could crop at my normal 7×5 ratio and make something high-res enough for print.

Step 7: Creating some duplicate layers and selecting a perfect circle, the quick mask in red, I blurred the background layer to blend the edges better. I also added a bit of noise to mimic the natural noise of the photograph.

Step 8: That’s it! You’re done and you should now have a similar image to the one at the top of the page.

Starting with a good photograph will save you a lot of pain. If you liked this, give it a try. They’re fun to mess around with and the results can be unexpected.