This is a 360 photo captured by Insta360 ONE RS 1", and this is FLOW 10K 360!
[Wow, this is Professional level quality with a Cell phone gimbal? No way]
Are you a 360 photographer who just got the brand new Insta360 Flow because of the
hype and quickly realized the Flow can only take 6K 360 photos with stitching
errors like this? Don't throw your FLOW into the trash can yet! [WHAT?]
This in-depth Virtual Tour Masterclass will help you get better 360 results than a professional
DSLR. We will teach you what to get and how to shoot to avoid stitching artifacts. How to get
the highest quality individual photos out of your FLOW and get the perfect stitching
for a professional virtual tour. This is easily the best 360 virtual
tour invention in 2023. Let's learn how to use it correctly from a PRO.
first we'll find out which is the best 360 camera virtual tour camera in 2023 Insta360
Flow with the iPhone 14 pro Max right here or the Insta360 One RS 1-inch 360 camera
right here or a professional DSLR like the Canon R5 with a Nodal Ninja 6 let's compare and find out
Here from top to bottom, we have Insta360 ONE RS 1" 360 capture in 9-bracketed HDR in 6K - the
best settings for virtual tour. The middle is Insta360 FLow with iPhone 14 Pro MAX - arguably
the best cellphone for photos and the bottom is a Full frame DSLR with Nodal Ninja 6.
Let's Punch in to the focus chart, we can see that both Flow and DSLR have
way better dynamic ranges than HDR in the One RS 1". The color is also more accurate.
Let's zoom into me. I am standing at the stitch line. My face is stretched b/c of the optical
flow stitching on the One RS. Both Flow and DSLR is very true to life in term of object
shapes and sizes. The resolution, 10K vs 6K is a huge deal in Virtual Tour 360 photo. Even with
YouTube compression, you can see the Flow and DSLR is a clear winner in term of details and
image quality in close up. The DSLR is better without small sensor compression artifacts.
But in the stitch line area, we do see a purple outline around very contract area like me here.
This is Chromatic Abberation artifacts. My DSLR has only captured four photos with a very wide
fisheye lens. The Flow captured with my iPhone wide angle lens automatically in 18 photos. I
can pick the best session of each photo to stitch out a 10K output without any Chromatic Aberration.
So, if you enjoy an easier, simpler workflow,
or you are not a professional photographer but want professional photo quality, than,
Insta360 FLOW with the latest iPhone or Android phone is really the best 360 photo camera.
But, as I pointed out earlier, you can not use the in mobile app stitching on your phone. The
in-app stitching only give you 6K output - same as One RS 1" - and the AI, it is actually a very
bad stitcher. There are stitching errors in every 360 photos I take. Before we learn how
to fix it in post, let's see what you can do to avoid this stitching errors.
How to Shoot with Flow
As you see, the AI is turning the FLOW to capture 18 individual photos. If the support system is not
rock solid stable, then the gimbal will introduce off-alignment when the photo is captured,
and it can not stitch well in app. Something in a strong wind situation, the error can be huge,
like this, making your photo unusable. So never ever use the built-in plastic
tripod leg or extend the pole like this. And also don't use the invisible plastic
selfie stick from your X3 camera. All those are not stable support when the gimbal is
moving and doing its thing. What I have here is Bushman VR Pole with weight in the base.
But you don't need an expensive heavy system like this tho. I will recommand the Ulanzi
travel tripod with a Falcam F22 quick release. It will help you quickly switch from hand-held gimbal
mode for video to on tripod 360 mode. A tripod will give you solid support even in strong wind.
Check out this review if you are interested in an affordable carbon fiber travel tripod.
The second very important point is to keep your gimbal level to the ground. My Ulanzi tripod has
a physical bubbler here to make sure the system is level. So the gimbal is not doing extra
balancing when turning to uneven locations. The third point is to balance your gimbal
correctly. Follow your on-screen instruction to attach your cellphone holder exactly here.
Make sure to set your timer to 10s to give your gimbal enough time to self-stabilize. If you know
how to shoot manual exposure settings to dail in your ISO, Shutter Speed and White balance,
do that. It will make your photo look a lot more professional. If not,
please at least keep your shutter speed, this right here, faster than 1/60. This help avoids
motion blur and give your a sharper 360 photo with an easier time stitching, with AI or manually.
The most important and hidden features that Insta360 doesn't want to tell you,
is the ability to save the individual images just like a professional DSLR.
It is hidden under the THREE DOTS on the top left corner. Scroll down to
the end and turn on save Unstitched Pano Photos. While you are at it,
turn on the histogram as well to help you nail manual exposure.
Right here in photo mode, select 360 photo mode. Then you are ready to capture 360 photos.
You can charge your phone with the Flow, but you need a fast charging solution to charge your FLOW,
especially when you are doing 360 photos - which will draw more power. I really love
the see tho design of the FLOW, so I want to find a power bank that can match it,
and I found one on the Internet. This is SHARGEEK Storm 2 Cyberpunk-style transparent design 100W
power bank. It can fast charge your Flow and you see how much wattage going into the gimbal.
When shooting an indoor virtual tour, FLOW has another advantage. You can
light your scene behind your camera to reduce noise. Here is with light,
here is without light, with light again, without light. As you see,
the quality difference is dramatic. You will need a pretty powerful light
to light a big space. I recommand the brand new Molus X100 100W light from Zhiyun.
It comes with a small softbox to diffuse the light. I can carry the entire setup with only
1 hand to go with the fast gimbal movement. The only problem is power. This light takes 100W
input to get full power. That is why I have the SHARGEEK Storm 2. This is the only reliable mobile
power solution that can power the Zhiyun light - making it a perfect run and gun lighting solution
for indoor 360 virtual tours for the FLOW.
How to Stitch 360 Photo
Now, let's learn how to get that 10K super high-quality 360 photos. I like to use iPhone.
Go to your photos, select all 18 photos, using
airdrop onto your computer. Organize them into a single folder.
This is optional. Having individual photos allows you to really edit each photo to the
best quality before stitching. This is how all the professional photographers get their
stunning 360 photos that have thoursands of likes and shares on Facebook 360.
For example, you can open the latest Lightroom to apply AI denoise with just a click of a button.
Right here to remove chromatic abberation, output them in Photoshop. In Photoshop in
the latest beta, you can use the AI magic removal tool to remove me entirely with the power of AI.
So if you are capturing outdoors and you don't want any tourists in your 360 photo, this is
how you do it. This feature is currently in BETA. If you want an in-depth tutorial on how to use it
with 360 photos, drop a comment down below. If you are lazy, you can just drop all your
18 photos onto Topaz Photo AI and upscale them to get 20K or even 100K gigapixel pano.
We are not gonna do that in this tutorial. But I want to show you how much further you
can go to improve your 360 photos when you get individual unstitched photos.
Now, let's learn how to stitch them. It is actually very easy. The best software
to use is PTGui. I will suggest PTGui Pro, which has Masking and HDR. You don't need
Pro for this tutorial. But it is my secret weapon for DSLR virtual tours.
Drop in all the 18 JPEG photos into PTGui. PTGui already have a profile for iPhone 14 and knows
all the metadata of your photos captured by the FLOW. See here. Click okay. Go ahead to hit align
images and let PTGui do the magic for you. After it is done, PTGui will open up Panorama Editor.
If you have Pro, you can use Find optimum seams right here. I turn this off for now. The result
is already almost perfect. There is some minor misalignment here, like on the tripod. Usually,
people will go into adding manual control points to fix the issue. But I find it easier just to use
Mask Tool to fix minor issues like this. We can see photo #2 has the full tripod leg. We
just use the green blush tool to paint over the tripod leg to tell PTGui AI to use this entire
portion and figure out the rest. Go back to pano editor. Like magic, PTGui fixes the broken leg
issue. We also notice some misalignment on the cable here. Photo 18 has almost the full sky.
So we just ask PTGui to keep all the cables here in photo 18. It figure out again for us.
Super smart software and greatly underrated. BTW, this is NOT a sponsored video. I have been using
PTGui as a Virtual Tour professional for the last 8 years. Ask any successful pro 360 photographers
who are not BS YouTubers, who have been in the community for a while, they will tell you the
same thing. I am just sharing my secret weapon so you can too, create beautiful 360 photos.
Here I am using PTGui Exposure Fusion and Tone Mapping tools to get HDR results without capturing
HDR. This will increase your dynamic range greatly when you boost the shadows. That is
why my shadows and highlights look so much better than the Insta360 Flow App output.
I am sharing so much of my secret techniques, you should consider giving this video a like
and follow me on Instagram to learn more. Now to go create panorama tap. See the stitch
resolution is 10K right here. Select TIFF, choose 16-bit none compression render. We
are going to further edit it in Affinity Photo or Photoshop. Hit Create Panorama.
Open Affinity Photo 2, drop in that stitched photo. Turn on Live Projection, we see a minor
stitch problem on the ceiling. No problem. We go back to PTGui to fix it. More chance for you to
learn. This time, let's use control points. We see 14 and 18 has only 1 control point - that is why
the ceiling misaligns. Let's find some similar features on both photos and let PTGui know they
are the same points. Optimize the stitching. Look a lot better. Render and go back to Affinity Photo
2 to check. Good enough. You can spend more time to find more control points generally will give
you a better result. But let's move on. We are going to output a 10K jpeg from Affinity
Photo. Open EXIF Fixer to inject metadata. Sorry EXIF software is off-screen right now.
Now just open up Facebook or any Virtual Tour software you use and upload the 10K tone mapped
Insta360 Flow 360 photo and wait for all the likes come in from your friends and clients!
This is HOW you get the best 360 photos with your iPhone and Insta360 FLOW. Having 10K 360
photo will make your virtual tour business stand out compared to your competitors who shoot with
Insta360 X3 or One RS 1". I talked to Insta360 developer at NAB this year, and they will continue
the development of FLOW to unlock the usage of the high-quality 1x lens on your iPhone,
and allow saving DNG RAW files onto your phone. We also consider supporting HDR directly on the
phone. Using iPhone lidar get depth map and the same output as Matterport. Or creating 3D
360 photo on 3DVista using the Lidar depth map. We are even playing the ideas of NeRF
capture like LUMA AI and Photogrammetry. This is an AI gimbal, and it should support NeRF AI. All
these require community requests. The best way to show your interest in supporting my
AI thesis and my push on Insta360 engineer team is through your comments. Request your features,
upvote others on the YouTube comment session down below. Insta360 is keeping a close eye
on my comment. As you know, I am one of the few who is trying offer real knowledge to
give back to the Virtual Tour Community. So, support me by subscribing this awesome
YouTube channel, hit the notification bell, so you don't miss cool tutorials just like this one. I
also want to thank my loyal viewers for continuing to challenge me in AI, XR research in 360. So I
can offer something unique on this channel to make a positive impact to the community.
Well, the next tutorial is even better. It is about AI in XR. See ya!