'Filling in' the missing top of a 360x151° equirectangular panorama

[CJ Davies]

Thanks to the help I got here a few weeks ago when I first started trying to make panoramas, I've managed to produce some half decent samples since moving up here to the Outer Hebrides (see the attached image, which is XML tagged for viewing via an Android phone/tablet with the stock Photos app should you wish).

The physical setup that I am using produces a 360x151° equirectangular panorama, which results in a small black circle at the 'top' & 'bottom' of the sphere (at least when viewed via PTGui's bundled viewer & via the Android Photos app). This honestly doesn't bother me, but I've been asked if I can fill in the 'top' circle somehow.

I thought about simply stretching the image, or about enlarging the canvas & then using content aware fill &/or the clone brush to fill at least the top space (the bottom could be left blank/black), but I am wondering if there are any better approaches that people can proffer?

[John Houghton]

You should either generate a full 360x180 panorama or extend the canvas size of your existing image so that its pixel dimensions are in the exact ratio 2:1 - e.g. 7210x3605.  Then you edit the zenith area by extracting a rectilinear view using one of the various available methods.  Then in Photoshop make a selection around the hole and use Edit->Fill with content aware option selected.  Save the edited file and insert back into the equirectangular file.  I got this result for the edited zenith:

http://www.johnhpanos.com/temp/patched_sky.jpg

Ways of extracting the rectilinear view include:

Generate 6 cubic tiles with Pano2QTVR or Pano2VR.  Edit the zenith tile. Rebuild the equirectangular file from the updated set of cubic tiles.

Use PTGui to extract an arbitrary view for patching and return the exited view back into the equirectangular file. www.johnhpanos.com/nadir-edit.pdf .

Use the scripts/PTGui files at http://www.erik-krause.de/ in the Tips, Tools & Techniques section to extract cubc tiles (cube faces) and rebuild the equirectangular file.

You can also generate cubic tiles with PTGui using Tools->Convert to QTVR/ Cubic

Or you can use the method described in FAQ item https://www.ptgui.com/support.html#5_20  

Other methods can also be used ...

John

[CJ Davies]

Thanks John! I followed the instructions in;

http://www.johnhpanos.com/nadir-edit.pdf

And managed to patch both the zenith & nadir seamlessly. The only problem was when I didn't read the instructions properly & loaded the original PTGui project (with all 18x photos) rather than starting a new project & just loading the single (extended) 360x180 image!

Regards,

CJ Davies

On Friday, July 17, 2015 at 4:15:16 PM UTC+1, CJ Davies wrote: