How do I create a "portal circle" from image?

[Ofnuts]

(04-21-2020, 07:04 AM)AngelUnit01 Wrote:

(04-21-2020, 06:45 AM)Ofnuts Wrote: Create a square image (for best results it should be laterally seamless), and  Filter>Distorts>Polar coordinates and tick the To Polar option.

Thank you so much! That did indeed work! You are my hero, seriously.

Is there any way to soften it? I tried with a square image but the further out the edges got, the more distorted and unrecognizable they became.

Do you think this problem might be resolved if the image that's being distorted is much larger and then cropping into the more "clean" parts so to speak?

If you look how it works, the width of your base image becomes the circumference of a circle of the same diameter so it it stretched by a factor of Pi. If this blurs your image too much, you can start  with an image approximately 3x bigger, transform it, then shrink it 3x.