Now that iGuide supports adding our own panos in a 2 to 1 ratio format I’m wondering if anyone here has used the DJI Mavic Air? It can produce a panoramic image and I’m wondering if its compatible with iGuide right out of the drone with no further editing required.
Doing a bit of my own research it sounds like whatever stitching software they have onboard isn’t fantastic, but that might have been because someone wasn’t far enough away from things and the drone’s own movement messed it up a bit. The drone also will save all the still images for you and then I could stitch them in my own software, but it would be nice to avoid that extra step. It would definitely influence my next drone purchase if I thought the drone’s own photosphere were decent quality and compatible with iGuide so the whole process only required one quick press of a button on the controller.
The DJI system does not output an equirectangular image file, which is what we need to upload.
Photoshop sucks at merging aerial images into panos for some reason.
The most efficient process I have found is:
Take your image files that the photosphere function in DJI Go creates and process them as you like in your image editing software.
Export them.
Use AutoStitch (free) to merge these into a pano. Export the pano.
Import the pano file into photoshop and adjust the image dimensions to the 2:1 aspect ratio required for an equirectangular image.
Adjust the position of the image so the horizon line is in the centre.
Use the photoshop tools you are comfortable with to blend or fill in the missing gap areas.
Switch to the photosphere mode in Photoshop and then export the photosphere. This will give you the 2:1 image you need for the portal.
This takes too long for me to do on a regular basis. I will only do it for special cases now ($$$).
Thanks Doug, I agree that it seems a fair bit of work considering it won’t generate any more revenue. I bought PTGUI software a couple years ago and created several aerial panos, but I had hoped for a quick and easy way to do it. I guess DJI is not creating the most recognized equirectangular image aspect ratio that iGuide would recognize. Too bad…