Boo!
So I was looking back at my YouTube channel this week,
and I went back to the early, early days.
Back when I had zero subscribers.
And one of the very first comparisons I ever made,
was a comparison between the tiny planet
and 360 photo apps available, back in...
It would have been like 2016.
And it got me thinking about how recently,
I've also been getting a lot of questions
about which 360 photo mobile app,
I'm using right now in 2021.
And, this is an area where the options
have been few and far between.
There hasn't been a lot of 360 camera-friendly apps
released over the past few years, until now.
Over the years I've been using
the Roll World and THETA+ apps.
And while they are both extremely good,
they are updated maybe once a year, if that,
and still quite limited in what you can do
overall, in terms of firstly reframing
the 360 photos and videos.
But also your export settings,
are very limited using those apps.
So today I've got an excellent app for you,
that's compatible both with 360 photos and 360 videos.
Not only is it a great app, but it's free,
and is compatible with both iPhone and Android.
And the app is called ReShoot 360.
Now let's take a look.
So once you've downloaded the ReShoot 360 app,
which I will also link below, open it up, and straight away,
it's going to present us with an import screen.
So navigate to the photo or video you want to edit.
So I'm going to open up this photo here,
from my last trip to Melbourne.
And next we have to choose what we want
to do with this 360 photo.
Do we want to turn it into an animated video,
or do we want to present it just as a photo,
like it was before?
So I'm going to hit Photo,
now we choose aspect ratio.
If you're editing for Instagram,
you want to choose 1:1, 'cause that's a square.
And now it's presenting us with a bunch of presets.
So if you're feeling lazy,
and you just want to click one
and have the app do it for you,
then there are a few cool options here.
However, I don't think they're gonna be
as good as editing them ourselves.
They do have a Paid feature, which is this Mirror Planet.
You don't need to buy that unless you want that effect.
So in our main window here, we're going to select Editor.
And what I like about this app,
is there are a few ways to manipulate your photos.
I found with the THETA+ and Roll World apps,
that you have to use sliders or pinch and swipe
to change the manipulation of the photo.
Well, the good news is in ReShoot 360,
you have the option to do both.
So in the editor, simply swipe around your image
pinch to zoom in and out, and there we go.
If you like editing that way, you can do it that way.
But if you prefer being really precise,
if you're someone that obsesses over symmetry like I do,
then you want as much control
over the manipulation of this photo as possible.
So what we're going to do is, down
the bottom left, go to our slider menu.
And straight away, firstly, it gives us a grid.
Awesome, I wish all the other apps had a grid!
Because it means you can get your circle perfectly circular,
but also you can change the settings here
using these sliders.
This X, Y, Z, and Zoom.
Okay, that is looking pretty symmetrical.
So now I'm going to go back to the previous menu,
and I just want to show you one more feature.
And if you see this ruler down the bottom here,
I'll tap that, and what this is is a horizon leveler.
Some cameras don't always stabilise this properly,
and you'll end up with wavy lines on the horizon.
Well, you can simply tap to adjust the horizon.
How cool is that?
You can also move the photo around like this,
if you want to reposition your horizon and so on.
But now, I'm pretty happy with this photo,
this is Instagram worthy.
So up the top, right, is our export menu.
And what I love about this app,
is you can choose from many different settings.
So there are some export presets here for Instagram,
Instagram Stories and so on, but here we go.
We can adjust the actual resolution of the photo.
It's not just one or two presets.
And you can also choose your photo format,
so no longer do you have to export a JPEG,
but you can export a PNG as well.
So now I'll hit start to start the export.
And there we go, we've exported a 360 photo,
as a tiny planet in ReShoot 360.
And as you can see, the quality is really good
and much better than the other apps would produce.
Next I want to show you the workflow for 360 video.
And this app can create some pretty stylish 360 animations,
whether you want to go with the tiny planet effect,
or you want to reframe around your 360 video.
So firstly, go to your camera roll
and choose the clip you want to edit.
This time, I'm going to choose video, which is down here.
Again we can choose the aspect ratio.
Assuming we're editing for Instagram,
I'm going to go 1:1.
Just like before, we have some presets.
So let's try the Spinning Planet.
As you can see, it's key framed an animation,
rotating the tiny planet 360 degrees over 15 seconds.
And there are a few others, they're okay,
but again, this is the kind of thing
that you need to control yourself,
because a preset animation doesn't know
where the good stuff is in your video.
So what we're going to do is hit editor at the top right.
So we can manually key frame this video ourselves.
Down the bottom we have our timeline.
If we press play, we'll see our 360 video in action.
So the first thing I'm going to do,
is find the starting point of this clip.
And I want it to be when I'm already moving,
so that's about four seconds in.
So what I'll do is press the plus on the right-hand side.
And as you can see on the timeline,
it's created our first key frame.
And what I'm going to do is change the perspective
to one I like, by pinching and zooming.
Again, you can use the manual controls if you like.
But personally, I think that over complicates things.
So now we're going to hit play,
and look for our second key frame.
So let's say I want to put a second one here.
I'm going to hit plus again.
Now I'm going to pinch to zoom,
and, let's say I want a more normal perspective
of me walking along this jetty.
So let's make that the second key frame.
Now, going back to the first one, press play,
and it makes a slow transition from 0.1 to 0.2.
Okay, next I want to do a 360 pivot of the horizon.
So I'm going to move a few seconds later
and repeat the process, create another key frame,
move the perspective with my finger, press play,
move the timeline forward, and so on.
And there we go, I've just key framed
a super basic animation within my 360 video.
Now this is kind of similar to the Insta360 app,
where you can edit your key frames
as well as your transitions.
So if you want to change the type of transition,
if you want it to be smooth,
if you want it to be linear, elastic,
hard cut, and so on, you can do that
by just hitting the transition
in between the two key frames.
Now I do want to point out that you can repeat
the exact same process with photos as well.
So say you want to turn a 360 photo into an animated video.
You can do that by selecting the photo,
but then choosing Video down the bottom,
and repeating the exact same process
that I just showed you.
Something else cool I want to mention;
is that ReShoot 360 saves your projects.
So if you hit the folder down the bottom right
from the main menu, you can see
all of your previous work here.
So here's an animation I made before Christmas.
I think this was my One X2 photo video.
And I made this for Instagram Stories.
And there you go, you can see
the key frames I used and so on.
So I can return back to this project
if I ever need to re-edit it in the future.
And just like with exporting photos,
it does give you a good selection of options,
to choose when exporting 360 video and reframe photos.
So you can choose your video resolution,
choose the aspect ratio, bit rate and duration.
Now how cool is that?
Christmas has come early for 360 photographers.
I really love this app.
And, I think it's the best app
for reframing 360 photos right now.
Whether you want just a simple flat perspective
to upload to Instagram, or if you want
to do something a bit more complex,
and reframe 360 video on your phone.
Right now, ReShoot 360 is free.
So definitely take advantage.
I'm sure they'll add more paid features over time,
but this app is fantastic and I highly recommend it.
Okay, so now that you know
which the best app is and how to use it,
next you probably want to know how to create
the best and coolest tiny planet effects.
If so, feel free to download a free copy of my ebook,
A Beginner's Guide to Tiny Planet Photography,
which I'll link below.
By the way, the good news is the sun
has finally come out here in Sydney, yay!
It's been raining torrentially for a week,
and the whole city is flooded,
and I've been so keen to get out
and take 360 photos and play some Pokemon Go.
But that's normal, it's a normal habit for a grown man.
But yeah, the sun is shining, life is good.
Hope you're all good.
Keep 360ing and I will see you next time.