Shooting, Stitching, and Sharing Interactive Panoramas Using Merely Photoshop and Free Resources

Drones tin capture stunning landscapes from a bird's heart view, and panoramas are a not bad fashion to capture a vast landscape that cannot fit into a unmarried photo. And with interactive 360 degree panoramas, nosotros tin can make viewers feel as though they are inside of the photo. Because about drones don't have 360 degree cameras, I'm going to evidence you how to make a 360 degree paradigm by stitching several photos together. This process can seem catchy at showtime, but, with practice, tin can become fairly straightforward. Imagine your drone is in the eye of a sphere, and you shoot images to comprehend the inside of the sphere. Afterwards, we will be able to step inside the sphere and look around.

At that place are many different programs and software that yous tin use that volition practice a lot of the work for you lot, but rather than download a agglomeration of new programs, I'm going to bear witness you how to brand and share them using only Photoshop and other free resources.

Things y'all will need:

  • A drone
  • Photoshop
  • Flexify ii plugin Free Trial
  • Kuula.co free membership

Shooting

When shooting, set your camera to manual mode and wing up to the desired height. I find that it works all-time when shot at virtually 100-200 feet, but these photos can really exist taken at any elevation.  From hither you lot take ii options: you tin either shoot them manually or with an automated app such as DronePan or Litchi, depending on personal preference.

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    Tip: Sentinel the red pointer in the bottom corner of your screen to know which direction your camera is pointed.

    If you are shooting manually, outset past taking a regular panorama. To exercise this, have ane photograph, then rotate your camera virtually 45 degrees, and accept some other photo. Repeat this until yous have reached your starting point.  Then tilt the camera down well-nigh thirty degrees, and repeat the aforementioned process. Exercise this again at about sixty degrees, then betoken the camera straight downwards and have one photo. Make sure that there is nigh 40-50% overlap in each photo, and so that Photoshop has enough information to stitch them together.

  • If you lot would like to utilize an automated app, I recommend DronePan (free) or Litchi ($). These apps exercise this exact same process, but all you have to do is press a button and your drone takes information technology from in that location. These apps take a lot of the guesswork out of shooting, and provide actually accurate results. In postal service product, a lot of warping and baloney can happen if your photos aren't evenly spaced out, and these apps will eliminate a lot of that distortion.

You should accept a group of photos that looks something like this:

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Stitching

To kickoff stitching these photos together, open up your RAW photos in Camera Raw. Edit one of them however you lot would similar, and then select all of the images and utilise Alt + S to synchronize those settings to the rest of the photos. It is important to make sure you enable profile corrections so that the images stitch together smoothly. Now select all of the images, right click, and select "Merge to Panorama." Information technology can take a couple of minutes to load the preview because the RAW files are so large. In one case the preview loads, make sure to select "Spherical" as the project blazon, then click "Merge" and select where yous would similar to save the new RAW image. If yous shot manually, this is where you will run into some distortion if you shot incorrectly. You may take taken more pictures on the get-go rotation than the second or third, or overlapped some more than others. I found myself when taking the photos manually, I would overlap a petty too much. I would rotate all the way effectually to where I started, and take an extra picture for adept measure, merely then I had 2 very like photos, which is unnecessary. If Photoshop made something like this:

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This means that yous might take had too many photos looking straight down, or likewise many photos on either side.  If this happened, endeavor taking out some photos that might be duplicates, and make sure you simply have one looking straight down. Try different combinations until your panorama looks something like this:

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This looks improve, but still not exactly correct. Photoshop puts the photos together the manner you took them, from the top looking down. This is where the Flexify two filter comes in. Click on Filter, Flaming Pear, then Flexify Ii. This volition open up a dialog box with tons of options. The only thing you need to do is elevate the Latitude slider until your horizon line is direct. Click "OK," then your photograph is looking more like this:

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From here, go in and clean up your photo as necessary. Sometimes there can be continuity errors when stitching, or missing pieces. Use the patch tool, postage stamp tool, or content aware fill to fix whatever gaps or errors. Also, the horizon line needs to exist in the middle of the photo. Because we are shooting these with a drone, information technology is nearly incommunicable to capture annihilation directly above, so we need to fill in the sky a bit. And finally, nosotros need to make the edges blend seamlessly. To do this, select a small-scale rectangle on one side, flip it, and paste it on the opposite side. Then erase the harsh edge until it blends together. This style, the 2 edges of the photo will connect together seamlessly.  Once your photograph is gear up to go, salve it as a JPEG. It should expect something similar this:

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This is the flat version of your panorama. Next, nosotros are going to bring the photo to life.

Sharing

Kuula.co is a virtual reality sharing site where you tin upload and share your interactive panoramas. Information technology is really user-friendly (and Complimentary!) and easy to employ, and y'all can use it to share on whatsoever social media platform or embed in a website. All yous have to do is brand an account, and click upload. Drag in your 360 caste panorama, and it automatically makes information technology 3D. Now you tin click and drag to look around. If y'all are on your cell phone, the prototype will even motion with the movement of your telephone. If you lot wait down, it's equally though you are sitting hundreds of feet in the air!

Get Certified to Wing Commercially

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And that's how yous make a 360 degree interactive panorama!  If you'd similar to learn more than, please cheque out some of our other drone photography tutorials, or simply follow dronegenuity on our social media channels and subscribe to our mailing list for regular updates.