360x180 Polar Panoramas

[pixwithanother]

Hello,

I would appreciate some help with where I'm stuck with learning this technique.

I find the "planet" is highly pixelated and distorted - note the person in one of the images is really distorted at ground level. The size of the image that I am running through the polar filter is 5000px x 600px and I'm wondering if that is wrong and causing too much distortion.

I also haven't been able to find the sweet spot for the horizon line in camera and find that once I cut off the white border and make the image a square, I cut off quite a bit of the image. I've played with where i've placed the horizon line, to no success.

I know these are poor quality images in terms of the seam line being visible and the lighting being all over the place (and also ordinary subject matter). I'm not worried about that in these images as I'm aware of how to correct them in camera and in post-processing. I did these two shoots to try and correct the distortion in the planet and to find the sweet spot with the horizon - neither of which I've been able to achieve.

I would greatly appreciate any assistance.

thanks,
Kerrie