More How-To Articles

• Perfect the Colors in Your Photos
• Digital SLRs and Close-Up Photography
• Take Better Portraits
• Selecting a Format in Digital Photography: JPEG, TIFF, Raw
• Shrinking Digital Photos to Screen Size
• Selecting a Subject and a Center of Interest
• Taking Pictures with a High-End Digital Camera
• Managing Digital SLR Quirks
• Fix Your Exposure Before You Take the Photo
• Using Lenses Creatively in Digital Photography

This article was excerpted from: Digital Photography QuickSteps

Buy this book

Blog Posts About Digital Cameras

• LG adds DVD player to its digital photo frame
• Casio adds 'makeup function' to new digicams
• Microsoft Photosynth creates 3D panoramas from 2D photos
• Canon to give away Maria's Diamonds
• A new Polaroid camera is in the works
• Photo Safe II backs up your photos on the go
• How to take stunning portraits
• Samsung TL34 HD ups the ante with 14.7 megapixels
• Flashlight + camera = ???
• Photo tips for the 4th of July

1. Open an image that you want to appear as though it was photographed with a fish-eye lens.
2. Select the Crop tool.
3. Click at the top of the image and, while holding down the SHIFT key, drag the tool to the bottom of the image. When you hold down the SHIFT key, you constrain the cropping box to a square, which is perfect for a fish-eye look.
4. Click the Commit button on the options bar (it looks like a check box). Alternatively, you can press ENTER or RETURN.

5. Select the Elliptical Marquee tool and create a circular section that stretches from top to bottom and side to side, as shown next. Remember, to create a perfect circle, hold down the SHIFT key while dragging. Press the SPACEBAR momentarily to move the selection while creating it.

   

6. Choose Filter | Distort | Spherize.

7. Drag the Amount slider to 100, as shown here.

   

8. Click OK to apply the filter.
9. Choose Select | Inverse.
10. Choose Edit | Fill to open the Fill dialog box.

11. Click the down arrow to the right of the Use field and choose Black from the drop-down menu, as shown below.

    

12. Click OK to fill the selection.

13. Choose Select | Deselect. The following image shows an image with this effect applied.

    

Was this helpful to you? Yes | No