How to Apply the Fisheye Effect

Apply a fisheye effect to a photo by using the filters of an image manipulation program like GIMP, PaintShop Pro or Photoshop. Filters are commands that let you transform or create visual data with a few mouse clicks, or even just one. Imaging programs produce this data based on existing data in your pictures. Filters use only math to create imagery, as opposed to incorporating stored data from existing images. Despite this, filters are able to reproduce many real-world phenomena, including fisheye lens effects, with startling realism.

Instructions

1. GIMP

   • 1
     Click File and select Open. Navigate to and double-click a photo to which you'd like to apply a fisheye effect. GIMP will open the file for editing.
   • 2
     Click Filter, and select the Distort submenu. Select the Whirl and Pinch command, then enter "0" (without quotes) in the Whirl text box of the dialogue that appears. This tells GIMP you don't want to twist the image around its center.
   • 3
     Drag the Pinch slider all the way to the left, which tells GIMP you want the image to bow out uniformly from its center. This creates the fisheye effect. Click "OK" to close the dialogue and complete the fisheye effect.

   PaintShop Pro

   • 4
     Click File and select Open. Use the Open dialogue's controls to navigate to a photo you'd like to apply the fisheye effect to. Double-click the photo to load it for editing.
   • 5
     Click Effects, then select the Distortion submenu. Click the Lens Distortion commands, then click the Fisheye item from the Presets drop-down list of the dialogue box that appears.
   • 6
     Click "OK" to apply the distortion and close the dialogue box.

   Photoshop

   • 7
     Click File and select Open. Navigate to a photo you'd like to apply the fisheye effect to, then click the photo to select it. Click Open to load the photo into Photoshop.
   • 8
     Click the Filter menu's Distort item, then click the Spherify command, which makes imagery appear distorted by the form of a sphere.
   • 9
     Drag the Amount slider all the way to the right to push the image outward as though by a spherical object. Click "OK" to close the dialogue box and finalize the effect.