Well, hello there.
Long time no see.
How are the kids?
How about that local football team?
Now that we got the small talk out of the way.
Today, we're going to be talking about workflows.
There's a brand new best editing workflow for 360 photos.
So, if you're a casual 360 photographer
or you shoot virtual tours professionally,
you wanna pay close attention to this video.
And the reason I'm making this video,
is because there's been some not so good news
this week from Adobe about Photoshop.
Unfortunately, it's looking like Photoshop
is no longer going to be a reliable 360 photo editor
and they're going to be discontinuing their 3D mode,
which was essential for editing 360 photos in Photoshop.
So they say, "As of Photoshop 22.5,
released in August 2021,
Photoshop's 3D features will be discontinued.
3D features have enjoyed long success within Photoshop
over the course of 10 plus years,
however the personal computing industry
has recently been transitioning away from use of OpenGL.
Having to do with specifically the use of GPUs,
which is critical for 3D.
Toward native GPU APIs,
which ultimately began the slow deterioration
of Photoshop's 3D features,
all of which needed OpenGL.
As difficult of a decision as removing 3D features
from Photoshop is the silver lining
is, that the next generation of 3D content creation
tools from Adobe is already here.
Check out the substance line of 3D products."
And they link to another page,
where they have some other softwares.
And these really are programs that are focused
more on 3D rendering and 3D object creation,
as opposed to 360 photo editing.
That makes me a sad panda.
So here's how I interpret it.
Basically, they were able to make 3D 360 photo editing
work within Photoshop.
And something that everyone has noticed over the last year,
is that it has slowly become more and more buggy,
it freezes, it simply doesn't work sometimes.
And it's getting to the point where it actually
is kind of becoming unusable.
So they're acknowledging that,
and they're basically saying it's a GPU issue,
it's not solvable for whatever reason.
I'm not gonna pretend that I understand GPU API's
and OpenGL, because I don't.
But it does seem like a legitimate hardware issue,
as opposed to them consciously distancing themselves
from 360 photo editing.
So for now that leaves you and me,
well assuming you're actually a Photoshop user,
with the task of finding a workaround,
and a brand new workflow.
Now I wanna make super clear that this is not a video
about what is the best stitching workflow?
Or what is better, a 360 camera or a DSLR?
I'm not interested in talking about that, right now.
Instead, this is a video about
the 360 photo editing workflow,
meaning colour correcting 360 photos,
and removing imperfections from 360 photos,
like the tripod or monopod
in softwares that are actually friendly of 360 photos.
Okay, so the new best 360 photo editing workflow,
that will now be my default workflow,
is going to be batch colour correcting and HDR merging
inside Adobe Lightroom cc followed by editing out the tripod
and other imperfections, inside Affinity Photo
or TouchRetouch.
There's no question, Lightroom has been an industry leader
when it comes to photo editing,
especially when you've got a lot of photos.
Which you often do,
if you're shooting 360 photos for a virtual tour,
and it means you don't need to subscribe
to both Lightroom and Photoshop.
In fact, this brand new workflow
doesn't need Photoshop at all.
I've already colour corrected multiple shoots
using Lightroom and I love it.
Oh, another of exciting news
is if you're using this camera, the Theta Z1,
there is now a standalone stitcher,
which I will link down below in the description.
And that means that you don't need Adobe Lightroom
Classic anymore.
So if you want to follow another workflow entirely,
let's say you only want to use Affinity Photo,
you could do that and you wouldn't need Photoshop
or Lightroom,
but you just used a standalone stitcher to stitch
and then Affinity Photo to colour correct
and edit out the tripod.
This brings me to Affinity Photo
and in case you hadn't noticed,
Affinity is becoming the new Photoshop with the giant
selling point of being a tiny little fraction
of the price of Photoshop,
which is a one-time payment, no subscription fees.
Once you buy the software, you get to keep it forever.
And not only that,
but it's actually a really good photo editing software,
that also has a fantastic inbuilt 360 photo editing mode.
You set it up by going to layer, live projection,
equirectangular projection.
And then from there, you edit out the tripod
and other imperfections using the inpainting brush.
And then of course, there's also TouchRetouch.
I made a video about it a while ago,
but in case you didn't know,
it's a fantastic photo editor that is designed specifically
for editing things out of your shots.
And it also has an inbuilt 360 viewer,
meaning you can move in all directions around your 360 photo
and edit them out natively from that flat perspective,
which doesn't distort things when you export.
TouchRetouch is available on both desktop and on mobile,
and it's a fantastic app with a great healing algorithm.
So these potential workflows that I can see working are
using Lightroom then Affinity,
using Lightroom then TouchRetouch
or, you could just use Affinity and do everything in there.
However, I really do think Lightroom
is worth the investment,
it's a fantastic colour correction tool.
And in my personal opinion,
it's leagues above Affinity Photo,
when it comes to colour correction.
I'm sure Affinity we'll get there one day,
but it's not quite there yet.
It is however, a fantastic all around photo editing tool.
I will also point out that Photoshop does have a paid plugin
called Flexify 2 that allows you to distort 360 photos
into any kind of perspective you like.
Meaning you could just distort the image,
so the tripod is in the middle of the shot,
then edit it out and then move it back into place.
However, Flexify 2 is a paid plugin
and cost the same as Affinity Photos.
So I can't really see why you would opt for this workflow
over an entire photo editing solution,
unless you are a diehard Photoshop lover
and you are going to use it until the day you die
and not use anything else.
Which used to be me,
I can admit, I love Photoshop
and I'm very sad that it's missing this feature.
And I probably still will use it for editing my YouTube
thumbnails and other stuff.
But yeah, in general, I'm definitely going to try my best
to transition over to
Lightroom,
Affinity Photo
and TouchRetouch.
For now, I see this as the best and smoothest way
of navigating this Photoshop dilemma,
because if you're like me and you've used Photoshop
for years, especially for 360 photos,
you know it's been deteriorating,
it's only gonna get worse.
So instead of just using an old version
of Photoshop forever,
I would suggest embracing the new workflows
of Affinity Photo, Lightroom and TouchRetouch.
Because of this massive workflow change,
I've decided to add over an hour of brand new content
to my virtual tour pro course.
If you are interested learning the Lightroom
and Affinity Photo workflows in more depth,
you can join VTP down there.
Now I do think Photoshop will eventually bring back
their 360 photo mode.
When that will be, whether it's next month,
next year, 20 years from now, is anyone's guess.
So my advice would be embrace the workflow,
that works right now.
And right now the workflow I talked about in this video,
is the one that works.
And if it doesn't work,
then you can always go back to Photoshop, right?
Excuse the long, messy hair by the way.
Right now we're in a four month long lockdown,
here in Sydney.
It's crazy, you can't go outside,
you can't go get a haircut.
Everything is closed,
but the pandemic is coming to an end, right?
And when that happens, yeah, I'll get a haircut.
So anyway, hope you're all doing well.
Hey, if you have any alternative workflows
that you've come across since Photoshop
have done this thing,
let me know down there.
It would be curious to hear any other workflows
that might work.
I think I'm gonna wear a hat in the next video,
that'll be a first.
That's it from me.
Happy 360ing and I'll see you later.