Making A 360 Panorama: The Five Main Steps

One of the most impressive feats that you can accomplish with high-end photo editing programs is that of creating a 360 degree panorama. And as you will soon discover, it is not really hard: so long as you have the right software, and the basic skills to use the software.

You certainly don’t need to be a professional graphic designer to create a 360 panorama using the software that is available nowadays. The panorama software handles most of the challenging aspects of the task for you.

The five main steps in the process of making a 360 degree panorama are:

1. The software launch step: the software that you need to use in order to create a 360 degree panorama can be launched like any other software. This is, of course, assuming that you already have such panorama software on your computer. If you don’t have it, then there will be a preceding step of installing it, before being able to launch it. In the Windows operating system, the launching step may involve going to the ‘start’ button, then clicking on ‘all programs’ and then selecting this specific application before clicking on it (or pressing the ‘enter’ button) to launch it.
2. The photo importation step: to make a 360 degree panorama, you will probably need several photos. You have to bring these photos into the software you are using for the task. With the best programs, this should be just a matter of dragging and dropping the photos via the Graphical User Interface (GUI) â?? that is, in simple words, using your mouse.
3. The photo stitching step: this is the most crucial step in the process, because it is the step during which you actually make the 360 panorama. The previous steps were preparatory steps, and the ones that follow are just meant to complete/perfect the work. But the actual work is done in this step. This is where the importance of using special panorama creation software becomes clear. With such software, you just specify the order in which you want the photos in the panorama to appear, then you click on the appropriate stitching button, and voila, the (seamless) panorama is created. If you were to attempt to accomplish the same task manually, using an ordinary graphics suite, you’d probably end up sweating profusely by the end of the painstaking process.
4. The advanced editing step: this is where you perfect the work by, say, adjusting the contrast (of the now complete panorama), so that it is just right. You may also find it necessary, at this particular step, to crop some things from the panorama, and perhaps also to add some frames to make it look professional. Whatever you decide to do, so long as you are using the right software, you won’t find any major limitations.
5. The end-result output step: you may be required to make a decision on the format in which you will be saving the complete panorama. Then you will need to make a decision on what to do with it: which could be anything from printing to sharing online and onto pretty much anything else you can think of.

Annabel Lee knows how to stitch pictures for the past few months. Sheâ??s busy creating and sharing 360 panorama with her new found friend, panorama software.

Image courtesy of Arvind Balaraman / freedigitalphotos.net