Section 11: Making a Mirror Ball

Bad Balls

I was reluctant to write up this section because quite honestly I hate mirror balls. They're cool in a geeky sort of way, but using them on a web site (in my humble opinion) is tacky and distracting. So, that being said, here's how you make one. Just promise me that you'll think before you actually put one of these on your web site.

How to make it

Mirror balls are extremely easy to make. All you need is Photoshop and an equirectangular source image. For this tutorial we're going to start with this:

The first step is to squash the image into a square, so we go into Photoshop's Image Size dialog and resize the width to match the image's height. That will give us the resulting square image:

Now select the Polar Coordinates filter in the Photoshop Filter's menu, and click the Rectangular to Polar option:

Hitting the OK button should give you this:

This may look like a mirror ball but it isn't... not quite. One last step is needed. Go to Photoshop's Spherize filter dialog and set the Amount to 50%:

Now you've got a real mirror ball:

There ya have it. Please don't abuse it.