Fake Orbital Photography

Since I got a few questions how I did it, her is a short explaination for that photo:

Dune 2

I took this photo

img299.imageshack.us/my.php

As you can see there is a wide open area, flat and with some detailed, natural looking surface. There is a flat horizon, which can be easily selected and the area extends to the horizon, which gives the photo the illusion as if we see a planets surface that vanishes behind the horizon of the planet. A wide angle lens ist best for that, maybe even a fisheye (even though I never made a shot like that with a fisheye, i should try that someday...).

Then you take the photo and select the sky above the horizon in photoshop or whatever you use. Expand the mask a little so that a bit of the area below the horizon is selected as well and unsharpen the edge of the mask. You have to play around a little with the parameters for best results. Then just delete the sky and fill it up with pure black.

Voila: You already have a planet. :)

To make it a little more convincing you can use a tool to reduce lens distortion and use it the other way round to get curvature of the horizon. Here a fisheye would perhaps be handy, because it distorts anyway... I did it with software and for me it was helpful to crop the photo, so that the horizon is closer to the border of the photo. The effect of the lens distorsion filter is stronger there. Later you can just expand the canvas size of the image to get the sky back. I turned the whole image for a little more effect and that is basically all. The sun in this case has been created by a lensflare effect filter.

Since I already got a lensflare in the original, I placed the fake sun so, that the existing flare fits to the new sun.

So, if anyone wants to do it on his own: I will be happy to see more of that. :D