I've owned a DJI Mini 3 (not the pro version) for a couple of years now and I've always been frustrated with not being able to upload one of those 360 interactive panoramic shots to Facebook! I spent quite some time searching around for a solution. The closest solution I think I found was altering EXIF data so that Facebook recognised the image as being taken from a Theta camera (or something like that).

We recently had a lot of snowfall here in Penistone. I had an idea to take some "before and after" 360 image shots with my logo watermarked on the images and publish them to my Digital Marketing Company's Facebook Page and share it to local Facebook groups to improve my brand awareness.

So after some more Googling around, I bit the bullet and went for a paid solution. It was a £60 investment but in under 24 hours of posting it, I gained a web design client and 2 quote requests so that £60 has paid off big time!

Instructions

Here's how I managed to create a 360 degree° spherical panoramic image which I was able to easily upload to both my personal Facebook page and to my business's Facebook page.

Create the panoramic image in Panorama Studio

1. Choose the "Create Panorama" which comes up as soon as you open the program.

2. Drag all images captured for a spherical pano (I'm assuming you already know how to capture these with the drone) into the program. There should be 35 images in total, this probably varies with other drones but this is how many the DJI Mini 3 takes.

TIP: You can adjust the position and orientation of the entire panorama under "Edit > Straighten horizon". To move only the centre, you can activate the option "Restrict to horizontal movement".

3. Press "Align". Something comes up about focal length, press yes then Ok (no need to change any settings). It may say something about missing images, click on "Use Metadata".

4. Click render in the top toolbar, no need to change any settings.

5. You can do some basic colour correction, sharpening etc. in the app but I prefer to save it as a jpg, edit it in Lightroom, export as a jpg (ensuring not to remove any metadata) then reopen it in the app. Instead of creating a new pano, you choose to import a panoramic image and select the image you exported from Lightroom then render and save again.

See "Before editing in Lightroom" and Preview image in Lightroom with applied settings below.

TIP: The "Dehaze" tool is fantastic for turning what seems to be a drab grey sky into a more detailed and vibrant sky. Apply a bit of denoise to clear up the luminance noise it sometimes creates though.

Before:

After:

Panorama Studio has other tools that allow you to add "Hot Spots". It has a library of static and animated symbols to place on the image and you can add hyperlinks to them. You can also add your own graphics. You can also export as html to embed on websites.

Uploading the Panoramic Image to Facebook

When uploading the final exported image to Facebook, simply click on where you add your status with the "What's on your mind?" placeholder text in the field. Drag and drop the image or brose for it and add it. You can tell Facebook has recognised your image as a Panoramic Image because there will be a little symbol in the bottom right of the image (see below) et voila! That's how you upload a spherical 360 panoramic image captured by a DJI Mini 3 to Facebook so it appears as an interactive 360 "virtual tour".

Pennine SEO offers social media management services to businesses both in the UK and abroad. We've found some great ideas for content in all the years we have been doing it for. Things like this can work wonders for your social media reach and brand awareness. 

Here's the stats for the "before the snow arrives" 360 degree spherical virtual tour I posted to my business Facebook Page on the 4th of January (today is the 6th of January).

So far it has resulted in one new web design client and 2 quote requests for other services - just so you know investing in social media really does pay off if done right!