interesting articles
360 photo galleries and albums
Photographers need a location to store and display 360 photo albums so that clients, friends and family can view and enjoy their artistic creations. Primarily relating to landscapes and cityscapes, panoramic photographs and movies show an unobstructed vista that extends in every direction. They are generally all-encompassing pictures that capture a huge amount of visual detail as the moderns day 360 cameras take a 360 picture in a split second. Collections of photos of that nature are called 360 photo albums and they constitute album collections in galleries.
Virtual tours are just one purpose for panoramic 360 degree photo galleries. Just a single photographer with a good 360 camera can capture the setting and backdrop of a composition such as a house for real estate sales or of an undeveloped site or underground cavern. Viewers and prospective buyers can enjoy viewing these image collections in the gallery.
Digital photo stitching are a thing of the past. It used to take hours to stitch individual images together to form a 360 virtual tour. Nowadays you can buy a 360 camera for as little as $200 and produce a 360 virtual tour album in a few minutes (provided you use this website).
360 Virtual tours
Virtual tours and panoramic tours usually mean the same thing and simulate a visit to an actual location. Panorama shots can also be done with most modern cell phones although they are not strictly 360 because they only show a section of the whole area e.g 180 degrees. Traditional 360 virtual tours uses rectilinear stitching which uses fixed angle clockwise rotation of a digital camera in portrait mode and positioned top dead centre on the tripod, tripod. Cubical stitching was an early immersive ground to sky 360 virtual tour technique. One shot panorama optics fairly easily develop panoramic images and videos on smartphones, for example, which are referred to as rectilinear stitching.
Virtual tours are usually hosted online so that they can be accessed from anywhere. Video streaming services typically offer generous bandwidth allowances to prevent any degradation of the video image quality. They are growing in popularity because they are often the next best thing to having the visitor physically present at the site location. Hospitality, real estate and virtual walks all simulate the experience of being there. As with all photography, high quality equipment and experienced operators or videographers always deliver the most satisfying visual results for the spectator. These types of computer generated cybernetic images provide 360 virtual tours for almost any requirement and industry you can think of. It only requires a competent producer and a skilled director to pull the project together in a professional manner and create movie quality films.
360 photo album
You want to flaunt your great photos in a professional and well-designed 360 photo album that can be just one exhibit in your online gallery of multiple photographic artefacts. Physical 360 albums are not new when you consider how early image makers of the last century used techniques to transfer images onto rotating cylinders and the like to dazzle spectators with the effect of a true 360 experience. Nowadays an online album is the way to go with images from your digital camera. Good websites and online services allow you to upload many formats and file sizes, although it is always advisable to compress and optimise large images to reduce their footprint and make streaming faster (we do this for you with server side scripting). Nobody wants graphics to eat up large amounts of their mobile bandwidth. Your album can grow to contain as many images as you want and you curate it carefully so that it demonstrates the best aspects of your photographic subjects.
Good online 360 photo album design is not difficult as long as you approach it with a plan. Designing an album is way more than stuffing it with a large number of photos and labels. White space is your friend and use it to emphasise. Be a ruthless editor and cull any pictures that do not genuinely contribute to the overall composition or effect of the 360 album. Before uploading any images at all, collect and categorise them by subject and form a general timeline – a dry run. Usually, each 360 panorama (aka panos) or video will be just one single entry in your online gallery but you can also create albums/collections in any order you choose. It is important to carefully consider the labels you use to show it off at its best in the photo gallery.
Flash photography techniques may not always deliver good results in 360 photos and albums. While the set lighting is critical to excellent video quality, it is not the only critical component of a professional shoot that can enhance and transform raw footage into professional quality video. You can create photo mosaics to store in your 360 photo albums as well as pictorial collages. Image formats include jpg, png, gif etc. Other techniques include merging multiple exposures to build impressive HDR photographs and add borders and frames around your pics. The backdrop and setting can be changed using green screen techniques. You can change the aspect ratio and perspective before uploading your images to your photo gallery, which is specially designed to accommodate 360 pictures.
360 photography is the way to go for creating the most impressive virtual tours, photo galleries and picture albums. Panoramic images capture the imagination of the viewer and present a vista of a landscape or scenery to its optimum effect. Storage and uploading is straightforward, and designing an impressive collection into an album is not as difficult as you may think. Polishing video images to create stunning virtual tours is more commonplace now because of their huge commercial application in many industries. All of these make excellent content for your photo gallery and are well worth the effort to learn and master.
How was virtual tours done before 2016?
While they were usually generated from a series of still photographs. If you make a 360 video they can also be enhanced by including multimedia elements such as voiceover, text captions, soundtrack music. The visual elements are shot from a stationery camera location that is rotated at fixed intervals between shots. The lens then points to the next frame in the photo sequence. Virtual tours are becoming increasingly popular although cost are prohibitive (until 2016). a 360 photos differ from the panoramic photos because the camera is usually hand held while the camera operator or videographer walks through the set or location being filmed. Panning provides lateral views and each pan captures a different vantage point being photographed. Specialist video editing software is used to cut and manipulate the raw footage into the finished virtual tour video, Also, web-based online software enables users to upload any jpg cylindrical 360 image or spherical 360 image and present high definition (HD) virtual tours. The mathematical formulae are complex to generate camera lens profiles required to render a high quality panorama image that is generated by the depth of field (FOV) of the camera as well as the specification of the lens.
Camera and lens quality were important but good composition skills lend an artistic touch to any snapshot. Stitching still images together to create a 360 panorama was easy (though time consuming) with the right photo editing software.
The program code can calculate the path and angles of light rays through the lens of a camera and zoom in on the minutest detail using the vast count of pixels that the image contains as though captured by a human photographer. All these artefacts are suitable for uploading and storing in a 360 photo gallery to show them off to their best effect, which also uses specialist software and custom apps relating to the photographic arts and modern DSLR cameras. These 360 photos and images typically have a wide view and are at their best when gradually unfolded to the viewer. The virtual options are computer-generated and enhanced with special effects such as exposure, hue saturation, contrast control and brightness manipulation. Other touch-up options include sepia, vignette, cartoon and oil painting effects. Such presentations show off the skill of the computer software engineer as much as the talent of the experienced cameraman behind the viewfinder.
Cell phone cameras and 360 photography
Cell phone photos can be stitched together to create a 360 photo album or virtual tour. There are several techniques including pano mode, which requires the cell phone camera to be rotated sideways. In December 2016 a new fish-eye lens attachment came out that converts a cell phone camera to a complete 360 degree camera. We have not tested this 360 camera but we are sure in 2017 there will be a couple of more 360 cameras to see the light.
