AH, the good old spherical map. So simple (and so bizarre the first time you bumble across it by accident), and yet you can do so many cool things with it once you clue in.
Imagine a map of the entire northern hemisphere. One of those rectangular projections where Greenland looks totally enormous and Canada and Russia are blown completely out of proportion, but everything has nice square edges.
That's your original image.
Of course, you can collapse up the rectangular projection and stick it on a globe and that gets rid of the distortion. Now take the globe, and take a photo of it from the north axis (not the magnetic pole, the rotational pole). It's distorted again, of course, because everything down the sides is foreshortened.
That's your new, spherical mapped image.
Technically, you can do the entire planet, not just one hemisphere, like this but it really hurts my brain and the distortion is ridonculous.
That's the high level. How you get from point A to point B is through the wonders of math, which I don't sweat over because The GIMP has a filter that does it, and I understand so does Photoshop.
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(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-03 05:51 pm (UTC)Before I realised what I was seeing, I thought for a moment that I was looking down the deepest well in the world...
(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-03 09:20 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-03 10:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-04 12:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-06 10:49 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-07 08:18 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-08 03:20 pm (UTC)Imagine a map of the entire northern hemisphere. One of those rectangular projections where Greenland looks totally enormous and Canada and Russia are blown completely out of proportion, but everything has nice square edges.
That's your original image.
Of course, you can collapse up the rectangular projection and stick it on a globe and that gets rid of the distortion. Now take the globe, and take a photo of it from the north axis (not the magnetic pole, the rotational pole). It's distorted again, of course, because everything down the sides is foreshortened.
That's your new, spherical mapped image.
Technically, you can do the entire planet, not just one hemisphere, like this but it really hurts my brain and the distortion is ridonculous.
(no subject)
Date: 2010-11-08 03:23 pm (UTC)