Everyone Can Now Take and Share Panoramic Photos on Facebook
I am obsessed with 360-degree photography. I am that unpleasant person who loves to show my friends huge photo slideshows of my last trip. Photos can show a specific location well, but 360-degree photos do the job better. With 360 photography, you can really show someone what it is like to stand in the middle of a huge garden in Paris or on a rooftop balcony in Singapore. Facebook has been letting me upload photos I took with my Gear 360 for a little over a year, and starting this week, it added the ability for people who don’t have a 360-degree camera to create their own 360-degree experiences in the app, like Well …
With Gear 360, I just upload a file to Facebook and it appears as a 360-degree image that people can explore with their mouse on their computer or by moving their phone (or swiping) on their mobile phone. Taking a photo in the Facebook app is not easy, but the finished product is similar in many ways.
In the Facebook app for iOS and Android, you can now take a series of images, which will then be stitched together to form a single 360 image.
For the magic to happen, go to where you usually post your Facebook status update, scroll to the bottom of the options at the bottom of the page (it starts with Photos / Videos and Go Live), and then select “360 Photos” from the list.
A globe will appear from there, and you just need to rotate where you are in order to capture the entire area. After you complete the loop, Facebook will process your video and place it in your status post, photo gallery, or most of the time anywhere on the site you want to post. You can also choose where you want the image to be “initial” (ie, what your friends will see when they first stumble upon the image, before they start interacting with it).
If you really want to take panoramic shots, you still need a real 360-degree camera. While the images I take with my camera include the entire scene, including the ceiling and floor, the images captured on the Facebook app are essentially panoramic photos on steroids, no matter what was at the phone level. when you took the photo.
However, if you really want to take your friends wherever you go, this can be a great alternative to simply snapping a few standard shots from different angles.