Create the fisheye effect using Photoshop’s Spherize filter

Photographers capture curved images using a special wide-angle fisheye lens. This lens not only has a wide field of view, but it also introduces extreme barrel distortion so that the middle of the image bows out distinctively. If you don’t have a fisheye lens, or if you’ve taken a photo with a standard lens that you’d rather have shot with the fisheye, then you could create the effect using the Spherize filter in Photoshop instead. The Spherize filter curves your image to create an effect that mimics what you might have captured if you had shot the scene with a fisheye lens – and it can be done relatively quickly in a few simple steps.

01 The Initial Adjustments

Open the above image ‘fish_eye_before.jpg’ in Photoshop. Select HSL/Grayscale and click Convert to Grayscale. On the HSL panel, set Orange to −40 and Yellow to −10. On the Basic panel, set the Exposure to 0.25, Blacks to 10, Contrast to +40 and Clarity to +15. Click on Open Image.

02 Make a Sphere

Select the Crop tool, hold down Shift and then drag a square crop over the trees. Now press Enter. Select the Elliptical Marquee tool from the Tools Panel then hold down Shift and draw a circle. Press Cmd/Ctrl+J to copy the selection to a new layer.

03 Distort the Sphere

Click on the Background Layer then choose Layer>New Fill Layer>Solid Color and click OK. Select Black and click OK. Hold down Cmd/Ctrl and click on the top layer, then choose Filter>Distort>Spherize, set the Amount to 100% and then click OK.

04 Convert to Full-Frame

To create a full-frame fisheye effect, select the Crop tool, set the Width to 3cm, the Height to 2cm, and leave Resolution empty so the image will not be resampled. Press Enter.

The final image:

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 25th, 2012 at 7:00 am and is filed under Tutorials. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a comment. Pinging is currently not allowed.