The problem: when you edit a 360 photo to adjust the highlights, or increase clarity, it will often lead to a seam between the left edge and right edge of the photo. One solution is to use an app called AntiSeam360 by Stephan Baum (download here). Thanks Stephan! Here is the tutorial:
Note: Anti-Seam 360 is available only on Android for now.
Another way is to use Google Photos to edit the photo. With Google Photos, you can edit a 360 photo any way you like, and the edit will not create a seam line. Moreover, the edited 360 photo will retain its 360 metadata. BTW Google Photos is available on iOS and Android. It’s one of the reasons Google Photos is my favorite editor for mobile editing of 360 photos. Incidentally, there are other benefits of Google Photos for 360 photos:
what about editing on a PC?
It’s quite easy to do the same thing on Photoshop, Affinity Photo, Gimp or whatever.
For example, in Gimp you first change the canvas size (Image > Canvas Size) so that the width is 120% of the original size (click “Center” to center the pic in the layer).
You then duplicate the original layer (right click on layer > Duplicate Layer) and move the new layer so that its right edge matches with the left edge of the original layer. You duplicate the original layer again, and this time you move it so that its left edge matches with the right edge of the original layer (matching layer edges is a lot easier on Photoshop and Affinity Photo, but in Gimp View > Snap to Canvas is helpful).
At this point you can merge all visible layers or create a new layer with: Edit > Copy visible, and then Edit > Paste as > New Layer.
From here you can do all your usual color grading, adjusting highlights, shadows, clarity, dehaze, etc.
When done, just crop away the left and right sides of the image, keeping the 2:1 aspect ratio (be sure to crop only the sides, and keep all the original height).
On Photoshop I recorded an action to speed up the process.
Hi mic, thank you for the info..🙌🙌
you’re welcome Akbar!
Best regards,
mic