How to print a photo so it can be mounted on a globe?

Question

I'd like to transform an image so that it can be mounted on a sphere. I'd like to use an image of a map (see the One Piece world map on the image), but it could be anything. Here is a kind of Family Picnic Photo that I could use, (this isn't my family, is just a Google result). I'd like to do this as a gift for my cousin on his birthday. I'm beginner on photo processing and manipulation and normally I use Linux, but every suggestion is welcome.

I would like a way to transform this image or photo into a "globular" image/photo, to put on something like this:

Is there any software that can do this for me? If not, how would I go about computing the necessary slices of my image to fit?

Answer

IP-Slicer perl script can create slices which can stuck together into a ball. You can define the number of slices.

The following command will create 12 slices, where the sphere circumference is 1500 pixels.

sphere-slicer.pl 12 1500 sampleimage.jpg

Sample input:

Output (12 images):

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