Editing 360 Panos ... and retain exif data for FaceBook and the like

What’s the best way to play with a 360 photo that retains XIF or whatever it is that tells Facebook that it’s a 360 photo.

If I work on the photo in the iPhone photos app Facebook no longer recognises it as a 360

Windows or Mac?

iOS would be good. But Windows or iOS

Snapseed!!! Should have tried it. Delete whole thread if this has been asked many times before. Ta.

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The Mini 2 (and the mini before it) don’t have the exif to tell Facebook or Google Photos that the image is a panorama

Not found a quick (free) way on iOS but i use the excellent and free Exif Fixer on the Mac (also on Windows) and inject exif to make it seem that a Ricoh Theta took the image, then FarceFook etc recognise it as a panorama.

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Facebook does have a template available - if you can find it. I used to use it years ago to make 360 graphics so they had zero required data. The template inputted it all.

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I shot a pano on the Mavic zoom the other day and uploaded direct from the dji Go4 to Facebook. It worked perfectly and came out as a 360° scrollable panorama.

I did the same just now with a pano shot on the Mini 2. Uploaded direct from dji Fly to Facebook and it came out as an ordinary wide image, not scrollable.

Has anyone else experienced this?

Covered here @ash2020 , the images are not tagged in the exif as a pano.

Get hold of the free exif fixer and ‘inject’ some new exif stating the Ricoh Theta as the camera and it fixes it

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The Exif Fixer site now has an ‘online’ version of the app that you can use from your iPhone – or Android phone for those that prefer them. :smile:

It’s exactly as @milkmanchris says: the image needs the correct metadata for Facebook to recognise it as an interactive one. The old Facebook template (if it’s still around) isn’t a good option as some of the exif metadata should be calculated based on each image’s specific pixel dimensions rather than a generic template. Exif Fixer does it automatically.

Full disclosure: I made Exif Fixer. The process for fixing this manually was a huge PITA so it seemed useful to build a tool to do the hard work. It’s available for macOS, Windows and Linux. There’s also a web version that can be used from any device including Android and iPhone smartphones. Totally free.

https://exiffixer.com

Hi @thatkeith and welcome to GADC

Great work on exif fixer, I use it all the time.

Now if there was a way to view 360 photos natively in the iOS camera roll :wink:

Hah! I’m very glad to hear it’s useful. I hope the online version is sometimes helpful too. It’s simpler (no batch processing, assumes the image is a full spherical 360, and so on) but it works from any smartphone, so it’s a good ‘on the run’ fixing solution.

As for viewing 360s in the camera roll… oh boy yes. It’s a real shame that still doesn’t work.

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Okay, so I do think very successfully (thanks!), but is there a way to see the pano on my Windows 10 machine without actually uploading it to a site?

I know it’s quite generous, but there is a max per month upload limit for the free tier, and frankly some of the stuff I’m taking is rubbish. I’d love to be able to preview the whole thing offline first.

Google photos will let you view it as a 360 as long as you fix the exif

If you download Ricoh Theta from here 360-degree camera RICOH THETA

It works on iPad and Mac just load your file into it.

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…and Windows! Exactly what I was looking for, thanks!

Glad to help.

You can also post it in the DJI fly app by download to phone then share by a little box with a arrow pointing up it’s on the right top when pictures has finished downloading. It should then have a banner across the bottom asking where you want to post it eg Facebook Instagram and so on

The Mini 2 panos don’t have the correct exif to display on Facebook, exif fixer is your friend if you want to use this method or the theta app.

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Well I can do it