Create Fisheye Effect in Photoshop

Learn how to create fisheye effect in Photoshop using the Elliptical Marquee Tool and Spherize filter. 

Fisheye effect or a photo with a convex lens is a photographic technique that uses a unique lens for taking your subject in the form of a circular frame. If you do not have a fisheye camera, you can recreate this fisheye effect using Photoshop.

Final result.

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For this Photoshop tutorial, I'll use this image, 690346, that I downloaded from Pixabay.

Step 1: Draw Circle Selection

After opening your base image in Photoshop, grab the Elliptical Marquee Tool by selecting it from the toolbar on the left.

Draw a circle selection by dragging your mouse while holding-down the shift key. Just leave the mouse when you are done. You should see a dotted line outline the selection. Now, the selected portion of the document, in a circle, has been selected.

Step 2: Add a Soft Black Edge

Add a soft black edge between the image and outer area. Choose Select>Select and Mask. Enter a value or using the slider in the Feather column to get your desire edge.

Step 3: Apply Spherize filter

Go to Filter>Distort>Spherize to apply Spherize filter. Drag the Amount slider to 100% and Mode: Normal. This should add a fish-eye lens distortion to the image.

Step 4: Create Black background

Choose Select>Inverse to invert the selection. Choose Edit>Fill. In the Fill dialog box, under Contents, you can choose a black color to fill the selection area. Choose Select>Deselect to remove selection.

Step 5: Trim Image

Choose Image>Trim. Check the Top, Bottom, Left and Right Trim Away checkboxs. Click OK.

There you have it! Fisheye-Lens effect in Photoshop.

More on Photoshop tutorials:

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• Create rain effect in Photoshop
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• How to Create an Infrared Effect in Photoshop