If you're into virtual tours and 360 photography,
then today AI is about to make your life much easier.
I'm sure you've heard of the new generative fill feature that was
released with the Photoshop beta version, where you can select an
area, tell it what you want, and it digitally generates it from scratch.
One hour later.
Arrgh
Not only can you add things to photos,
but you can also subtract, as you'll see in this video.
And I think this workflow could be a total game changer.
It is in its very early stages, but I want to show you how this
new Photoshop feature can apply to virtual tours or even just casual
360 photos if you want to go the extra mile to make them look really good.
Now, as you probably know, Photoshop discontinued its 360 features,
and it's official with this new release.
They're all gone. There's no way to get back into 360 mode.
Therefore, in order to follow this workflow, you're going to need Photoshop still,
but also Affinity Photo, which is the new best 360 Photo Editor.
To get started, open up the Adobe Creative Cloud app and go to Beta apps,
then find the Photoshop beta and download and install it.
Then, obviously, you'll need Affinity Photo installed as well.
So here, I've got a 360 photo of an Airbnb that I took a few years ago.
What I'm going to do is open that up with Affinity Photo.
We're going to go Layer > Live Projection
> Equirectangular Projection. Now, here we are in 360 mode.
This is where the fun begins.
So my objective is to use AI to clean up this image as well as enhance it
naturally in a way that doesn't add anything that wasn't really there to begin with.
So, choose the area of your 360 that you want to focus on.
Here, I want to add a fire to this fire pit and get rid of these ugly cables.
Since painting them out manually will take extra time that I don't need to spend.
Now, what we're going to do is export just this section of the 360 photo to import into Photoshop.
So, I'll go File > Export and then save that as a high-quality PNG.
Now, it's important at this step not to touch Affinity.
Don't think about moving your photo around because this will
make merging our updated photo back into the 360 photo more difficult.
Now, we're going to open that up in Photoshop beta, which may also
be just a regular Photoshop once they add it to the full release.
Now, the way the generative fill works is you select an area,
and it works just on that area to do anything you want.
So, the way you select that area is up to you.
You can use the lasso, you can use the Marquee.
I'm going to start by using the lasso around these cables.
Now, click generative fill, and we need to give it instructions about what to do.
I'm going to say remove the cables, and now it works its magic, and voila, it's gone.
Wow, that looks super clean.
I really don't think I could have done any better myself.
That's a fantastic job it's done there.
I noticed that it also removed the leg of that bench.
That isn't ideal, but it's not a deal breaker.
Also, my fault for not being a bit finer with my selection.
Next, let's add some fire to this fire pit, and a mistake you'll want
to avoid is selecting too big of an area for it to work on.
For example, if I circle the entire fire pit and type in "add fire to fire
pit," it completely replaces the fire pit with something else. Different kinds of fire pits.
That one looks quite good. But again, with virtual tours and real estate,
you've got to be accurate to what's actually there.
So, I don't want it to completely replace the fire pit.
So, I'm going to undo that and change my selection.
This time, I'm going to hone in on just the pit and the area above it.
And that's it.
So, it knows to keep everything outside of that.
It's just changing what's inside the selection.
And I'm going to try being a bit more descriptive with the type of fire.
Calm, warm, inviting fire.
How good is that?
That looks pretty realistic, although not totally.
However, the good thing about this generative fill feature is it gives you options.
If you don't like the first one, just click the right arrow,
and there's another file, and there's another.
What if I try changing the description?
Fire embers.
Okay, those aren't exactly fire embers, but they are new variations of simulated fires.
Oh, that's fantastic.
Honestly, there are so many good ones here.
Maybe something like that.
Yeah, I'm happy.
Now, to get this edited version back into Affinity Photo, I'm going to go to File,
Export, Quick Export as PNG, going to save that.
Now, heading back into Affinity, I'm going to drag this image back into Affinity on
top of the previous photo, and I'm going to use the arrow tool to move it into place.
Now, remember, we're still in 360 mode in Affinity,
so now what we need to do is merge the layers down so they become one.
And to do that, I'm going to right-click the layer I just imported and choose Merge Down.
Now, when I go to Layer, Live Projection, Edit Live Projection, there we go.
It's fully integrated itself into this photo.
Let's try a harder one.
What's something that is always a problem with virtual tours?
Yep, when you look down...the tripod.
But not just the tripod.
Often, the tripod comes with
stitching issues around the base of the 360 camera if you're using 360 cameras.
And this can work its way into patterned surfaces below, like tiles or carpets.
As you can see, this has a pretty significant stitch line that is really noticeable.
So let's repeat the process.
I've chosen my shot, file, export, imported it into Photoshop.
I'll use the Marquee tool to select the carpet.
But this time, what I'm going to tell it to do is remove the tripod and fix the pattern.
Okay, I don't love it, but let's see the variation.
Okay, that is much better.
I think the second version is really good.
And as you can see, there's no parallax stitching error like there was before.
Now, you could try this again if you weren't happy with these.
So maybe I'll focus more on the stitch line area.
Generative fill, then remove the tripod.
That's crazy, that's crazy!
I know from experience there are some situations where you place a
monopod down in a virtual tour, and it's impossible to remove because of tiles,
because of natural patterns and lines within the environment that just make stitching impossible.
And sometimes, you can spend a full hour and not even get a perfect result.
But here, I've done it with one simple command.
So, while it is obviously really important to represent your locations accurately,
another way I think this generative fill tool
could be fantastic for virtual tour photographers is with virtual staging.
So let's say this room here was completely empty because the house is for sale.
In fact, hold on, you could add stuff in bit by bit.
So, an oil painting of sunflowers.
Hmm, and let's pretend this couch isn't here, a modern blue couch.
Hmm, it's pretty good.
Wow, wow, I like that a lot.
I would buy that couch.
This is incredible.
It really, really is.
And this is really just the beginning stages of it.
It definitely feels like it's a new tool,
but if this is the beginning, I can't wait to see where this goes.
So, absolutely, this could be a fantastic tool for staging
properties that are completely empty with any kind of furniture you like.
I can admit that this current workflow I'm using is a little bit cumbersome
because it's a bit of back and forth, especially when you've got a full 360.
You obviously need to move around to every part of it that you want to change and repeat the process.
But this is the result.
How cool is that? Seriously.
If you have any tips or tricks to add to this workflow, feel free to let me know.
But again, this is truly amazing, and I think this is 100% something you could add to your
virtual tour services as a fantastic upsell that would add more value to your clients.
Through offering these advanced AI editing techniques like staging, like
simulating fires and lights, and things that weren't possible during the shoot
because of bad weather, bad lighting,
or maybe the person was too lazy to properly clean their place or remove the cables.
You absolutely can add this service as an upsell and charge for it.
And photo editing is only a small piece of the puzzle in the overall
plan of starting a successful virtual tour business because you're going to need to learn
the best shooting techniques and, more importantly, the best business
plan for starting and scaling a profitable virtual tour business.
So, if you'd like to get instant access to my entire 10-plus-year photography workflow,
as well as the entire business plan you need to start charging for your virtual tours,
then feel free to enroll in my Virtual Tour Pro course, which I'll link down below.
And if you're excited about this awesome AI technology like I am,
but you're not sure which 360 camera will deliver the best results,
then check out this video here for my
full breakdown of the best 360 cameras available right now.