360 photos upload problems

[JimOsgood]

I am a level 3 guide and a trusted photographer with 79 360s uploaded to street view. I am now having difficulties uploading 360s. Street view just goes back to the source menu of where to find photos. In addition when I upload 360s to Maps, it does not recognize them as 360s. I have checked and meet all the 360 requirements. Photos are jpg 2:1 16MP 5656 × 282 82.5 MB. I am trying to upload from My Google Photos.  I have tried uninstalling and reinstalling street view, but did not help.

My Contributions:

https://maps.google.com/maps/contrib/107922107677932936899/photos

Is there anywhere I can get some help? I have visited the online help center already without success. I'd love to be able to be more involved, but if I can't upload photos, I am stuck.

Also, I'd love to be able to start connecting 360s into virtual tours. It has been a long delay in getting a new app out. It seems like the Trusted Photographer program is on hold. Any advice or updates would be appreciated.

[JimOsgood]

So, WOW. I guess there is no support for Google Trusted Photographers.

[treebles]

Hi JamesO,

If the photo sphere is shown as a flat image it means that the embedded photo sphere metadata was lost at some step.

Did you make edits to the photo sphere on an image editing program that might have stripped out the metadata upon saving?

In older versions of photoshop, for example, the Save for Web option remove most of the metadata by default.

Also, if you embed the coordinates and orientation of the photo sphere in the metadata it is not advisable to import them to the Street View app from Photos, it strips out that information.

It is better to upload the photo sphere from your computer to the Panoramas folder of your mobile device and import it from there to the Street View app.

[JimOsgood]

Hooray. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you.

The only place I can think that the metadata could have been lost is in the upload to Google Photos.... But I downloaded a couple and the data was still there.

I then tried to upload one through Street View and it worked! The I tried uploaded two of another job and it worked. I have made no changes.

Whatever you did,  Thank you. I seem to be back in business.

I use the current versions of Lightroom  and Photoshop CC2017.

I checked the downloaded images File Info in PhotoShop and it shows all the raw data. Sample below. Can you tell me which designates it as a photo sphere?

I really appreciate your getting back to me. I have felt deserted until now.

Jim

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[treebles]

Hi Tim,

There is no photo sphere metadata in there, Google will add it automatically if the metadata is missing. During the import step to the Street View app the missing photo sphere metadata is added based on the dimensions of the image.

I do not see either the GPS metadata.

[JimOsgood]

Wow. Interesting, but a little confusing. A few questions if you don't mind me being greedy for informaiton.

What would the sphere metadata look like?

How would it normally get there?

How would it get stripped out and how do you avoid doing so?

I am wondering if my stitching processors are stripping out the data accidentally. I just checked one I did myself with PTGUI and find the line xmlns:GPano="http://ns.google.com/photos/1.0/panorama/" in the File Info Raw Data description. I also noticed on my recent one there are a lot of Gpano statement:

 <GPano:ProjectionType>equirectangular</GPano:ProjectionType>
<GPano:UsePanoramaViewer>True</GPano:UsePanoramaViewer>
<GPano:CroppedAreaImageWidthPixels>6000</GPano:CroppedAreaImageWidthPixels>
<GPano:CroppedAreaImageHeightPixels>3000</GPano:CroppedAreaImageHeightPixels>
<GPano:FullPanoWidthPixels>6000</GPano:FullPanoWidthPixels>
<GPano:FullPanoHeightPixels>3000</GPano:FullPanoHeightPixels>
<GPano:CroppedAreaLeftPixels>0</GPano:CroppedAreaLeftPixels>
<GPano:CroppedAreaTopPixels>0</GPano:CroppedAreaTopPixels>
<GPano:StitchingSoftware>PTGui Pro 10.0.15 (www.ptgui.com)</GPano:StitchingSoftware>

I assume this is all good to have to let Google know it is a 360 x 180. Is there away to manually add it or generate it in Photoshop?

[treebles]

Hi James,

Sorry, I forgot to include the documentation page in my previous page, this is the URL of the documentation describing the photo sphere metadata.

https://developers.google.com/streetview/spherical-metadata

PTGui should add the metadata automatically, if it is no longer present after you further process the stitched image then check for the saving preferences in your image editing software.

If you are using Photoshop the metadata should not be stripped, older version of Photoshop, that has the "Save for web" option could potentially erase the metadata since, if I do not remember wrong it is the default setting, but the "Save as..." option should not.

Do you use Photoshop fr your image editing?

If you do, which version?

[JimOsgood]

Many thanks for all of your help. I think I am on a path to solving my upload issues.

I use the CC 2017 versions of Photoshop and Lightroom along with Photomatrix Pro 5.1.2

I was doing my own PTGUI stitching until I found a good outsource team. I am confident that the problem lies in their processing and I will need to work with them to make sure they do not strip out the Spherical Data in the Raw Data.

My next challenge is the lack of connectivity software to allow me to make Virtual Tours on Google. The mobile app is pretty wonky to connect several panos. Being a relatively new Trusted Photographer I am not able to use the previous version of Map uploader. Any idea when the new and improved version that has been long promised will be available. Any other resources I could use?

[treebles]

Hi James,

Google is not going to release a Maps Uploader for Google Maps as they promised, yet another let down from Google.

They decided instead to go the API route and there are a couple of companies that are advertising they will have an API solution by the time the Street View editor goes offline by the end of March.

There is GoThru

https://gothru.co/wmoderator.php

and also LCP360

https://www.lcp360.com/street-view-is-coming/

There might be more.

I don't know if those platforms will be available for all trusted photographers or only the old ones, you can contact them to find out more.

I also don't know if Google will make the API available to all trusted photographers that ask for access or not.

[EMajnoonian]

Hi James... what kind of camera do you use for the photos?