Originally posted by grhazelton O Great One!
Please tell us how you made these pictures! Inquiring Minds Want to Know.
Create a 360 degree panorama, while (as shooting) you try to avoid having anything poke up over the top of the frame (ie, you need open sky, no trees/phone poles/etc poking off camera up top). I use Microsoft ICE to stitch the pano, but any would do.
Open your pano in Photoshop (I'm sure you could use something else, but this is how I know it).
Once in photoshop, you want to flip the image top to bottom, then use Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates.
Post process as needed at this point to fix any blemishes or glaring weirdness and you should be good to go.
Fake edit: Keep your white balance and shooting settings steady throughout - just like any pano, you want everything to come out as equal as possible, but if your left frame and your right frame are at different exposures it will be super noticeable with this process.
I also shoot oriented as portrait rather than landscape (be careful not to shoot your tripod legs or shoes!) as it gives you a nice wide expanse of sky just in case you wind up having to crop some out while stitching. You'll also want to have a good overlap (at least 25%, preferably more) between the images as the super wide angle shots will be very distorted compared to each other as you make your 360 degree circuit.
You can also use a smaller lens (a 28, or even a 50 if you don't have any landmarks) but generally speaking the wider the angle the better the chances.
Also, you really want to either use a level tripod or be very, very careful with handholding (I actually handhold mine, usually) to keep the camera level and distortion free. The on-camera level is your friend here. Nothing is more annoying than getting home from trying one of these to find out your pano skews groundward.
Also, also, as much as I went on about insuring you have sky, once you have the pano you'll be using complete feel free to crop as much sky as you want - once you make everything spherical your sky will become absolutely huge, and the tighter you crop to the landmarks, the bigger those landmarks will be in the final image.
I have to run out and do stuff, but I'll see if I can make a clearer tutorial later, with images.
It looks a LOT more complicated than it actually is. Barring a need to heavily post process the complete operation will take maybe 5 or 10 minutes or so at most.
Last edited by Sagitta; 09-22-2014 at 01:10 PM.