Spherized
January 24, 2009 – 9:49 pm by John Keston
The Spherize filter in Photoshop is designed to force an image to bubble outward as if wrapping it around a sphere. Can you imagine what it would sound like to warp audio in the same fashion? I imagined that that the frequency would warp downward as the waveform was stretched and then back up to the original pitch on the opposite side.
Well, that’s almost exactly what happened, although I didn’t expect it to sound as deep and eerie as it does. For this entry I have shortened the image horizontally to emphasize what the filter actually did. I also lightened the image to make it more visible. It looks a bit like a zeppelin whereas the original image of the sound was flat. Please enjoy the Spherized version of the loop from the last entry.
3 Responses to “Spherized”
Nice series of photoshopped sounds…. sounds different from what I am used to hear, and that is very refreshing
By Document 02 on Jan 26, 2009
I like the spherized the best. Very Sci-fi other planet like. Creates a soothing ambiance.
By Jason Braun on Jan 28, 2009
By ‘spherizing’ the sound, the overtones are no longer octaves in difference. This causes the discordant sound to resemble metal percussion (which has aharmonic overtones)
By ingo on Mar 27, 2010