SKY PANPRAMA 360 PTGUI FULL
SKY PANPRAMA 360 PTGUI PRO

Colour matching is done with the sky at this stage, so it matches perfectly with the aerial shot. The third application is Adobe Photoshop CC, this is used to blend the two panoramas together, a layer mask is used with a gradient that merges the two together. Once the sky and ground panoramas are complete they are exported s 16bit TIFF files to retain all the colour and tone information for further processing without degrading image quality.

SKY PANPRAMA 360 PTGUI PRO

Three applications are used in the panorama creation workflow: Adobe Lightroom Classic is used for developing the raw images PTGui Pro is used to create the panorama for the aerial and ground shots, this is a great application that has a range of tools to create a perfect image. We use a technique called Viewpoint Correction to optimise the position of the sky, which effectively skews the sky image so it aligns correctly with the aerial image. The other issue with shooting the sky from the ground is parallax, clouds will appear at a slightly different position than from the sky. In clear weather it's easy to see the rays from the sun, but if the sun is obscured it can be difficult to align. In Autumn, Winter and Spring the sun will appear in the aerial image, however in the Summer daytime the sun will only show up in the ground image. Particular attention has to be paid to the sun position as this is used to align the scene to the map. A high resolution source image may have over 3,000 multi-resolution tiles making up the scene.

The completed 2:1 equirectangular images are saved as 16bit TIFF files, these are then used to create the multi-resolution tiles that the web server sends to your device when viewing.

Processing from start to finish takes around 45 minutes, a lot of work goes into ensuring the horizon is straight and there are no stitching errors. It takes a lot less time to shoot the images than it does to process them! The drone takes around a minute to take the 26 images from the sky, and it takes just a few seconds to shoot the eight images from the ground.

SKY PANPRAMA 360 PTGUI FULL

The two images are then colour matched and blended together in Adobe Photoshop to produce a full 360° by 180° image. The process is repeated with the eight sky images shot in raw from the ground, and resized to the same horizontal dimensions as the aerial image.

At this point anything above 35° from the horizon is missing as the drone can't shoot straight up. The photos are then imported into an application that stitches them into a 360° x 180° 'equirectangular' image. The aerial images are all shot in raw format, and they are developed in Adobe Lightroom ensuring the same settings are used for all the images. Whilst the drone is shooting from the sky, we use a ultra-wide angle lens attached to a special mount to take eight pictures of the sky which will be stitched into a separate 360° x 180° image. It uses a programmed grid pattern to ensure the images have enough overlap to stitch together. In the air at 400' (120m) our drone shoots 26 images from 35° above the horizon to the ground. The minimum image size in the tour is 200MP (20,000 pixels x 10,000 pixels), however the more recent scenes are 392MP (28,000 pixels x 14,000 pixels). The images are created by stitching together a set of photos that are taken all around the central point in special software. The 360° scenes are actually equirectangular images with a ratio of exactly 2:1, providing a 360° horizontal field of view, and a 180° vertical field of view. Here you'll find some resources about the tour, how 360° images work, and the equipment and techniques we use to shoot the scenes. Home Maps and Views Resources Competition! Resources

Sky panprama 360 ptgui