How to make a circle polyorama (the tiny planet) with Lightroom 5 and Photoshop CC

I was asked about how I made this photo and although there are tutorials out there on how to make the tiny planet, I decided to make one myself - so here's a new tutorial by me - made with Lightroom 5 and Photoshop CC.

1. get a 360 panorama of whatever you want on your planet. It turns out the best if you have a wide angle lens and you have to hold your camera vertically. Perfect scenario is to have even ground (all snow, all grass or pavement) and nothing too tall so can fit it into the frame.
The photo in my tutorial is only my second, but I was very pleased with how it turned out. My first had trees sticking out of the frame and when I finished it they were very stretched on top and unfinished.

2. edit your photos in Lightroom before you create a panorama.

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3. when you are ready, send the photos to Photoshop and stitch them.

4. remember to merge layers and then crop the photo exactly in the spots where you want them to connect (do not leave any space to overlap like when you take photos for panorama)

5. resize the photo to a square (Image -> Image size) and change the length number to the height number.

Make sure that the aspect ratio is turned off. I know! It looks horrible!

6. flip the photo upside down (Image -> Image rotation -> 180 degrees).

7. here's where you're going to see your planet for the first time! Go to Filter -> Distort -> Polar Coordinates. Keep the selection of Rectangular to Polar.
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8. Tada! 

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9. fill in the selection with the color of the sky and fix it up with the Clone stamp tool (S). You might need to do also the ground, so it looks more even and the area where the two ends of your panorama connected.

It does take a while, but it's worth it! Let me know how yours turned out and ask if you have any questions in the comment bellow, email me or send me a message via my contact page.