Before and After - Cardinal Planet

[Patti Edens]

I'm still playing with the polar coordinates. This is crop, polar coordinates, flip horizontal, rotate to desired position for Cardinal, blur background.

[Cindy Mead]

ack, I left a comment but must have clicked the wrong button :) this is such a cool effect Patti- I really love how the cardinal appears to be sitting on the ledge of a round window. I wouldn't begin to know how to do this, but I sure like the result, very unique :)

[Patti Edens]

ack, I left a comment but must have clicked the wrong button :) this is such a cool effect Patti- I really love how the cardinal appears to be sitting on the ledge of a round window. I wouldn't begin to know how to do this, but I sure like the result, very unique :)

Thanks Cindy! I appreciate the kind words. This is actually very easy. There are a lot of ways to do it, but with Photoshop, one way is to just crop your photo to a perfect square, make sure it's in 8 bit (Image > Mode > 8 bit) and then go to Filter > Distort > Polar Coordinates. Click on Rectangular to Polar and OK. Done.

Then you can do more things like select the circle, invert the selection and run a Radial Blur on the area outside the circle. You can flip it and rerun Polar Coordinates for other weird effects. It is fun to play with.

[Cheryl Slechta]

Patti, this is an amazing job! I understand the workflow but am amazed that the cardinal ends up there.
Really nice:) I like the bg through the window too!

[denise ippolito]

Excellent!! Patti, Thankyou for sharing your work flow. Great looking image and you couldn't have done a better job w/ the processing!!!:D It looks like a window w/ beautiful green glass.

[Jackie Schuknecht]

Very cool and creative Patti, I really like it.

[Indranil Sircar]

Hi Patti, this is a beautiful image and a great idea! Love your processing and the final effect.

[Mark Fuge]

Nice image and application, Patti

The fact that the bird is still whole and detailed and not blended into the image is nice.

[Christopher Miller]

Very nice, Patti! You did an excellent job processing. :) I love how the wood frames the BG.

[denise ippolito]

Patti, Fantastic image and super Congrats!Your image will be our wildcard pick of the week!:)