Panorama to Facebook 360 workflow?

[Bill Gilliss]

A client for whom I've generated a cloud-rendered panorama as a stand-alone HTML file (easy!), now would like to put the same image on Facebook as an interactive 360-degree panorama (not so easy). I've found myself lost in a swamp of command-line EXIF editors and XMP schemas. Is there a straightforward way to accomplish this? Any suggestions -- or better yet, step-by-step instructions -- will be greatly appreciated.

Followup: I ended up hosting the HTML on my own website and the client provided a link to it on FB. Good enough for now.

[Bill Gilliss]

SOLVED!

This turns out to be pretty straightforward:

1) On the on-line My Renderings page, select a panorama and use the "Download Pano as Equirectangular" option. This will yield a ZIP file containing seven files (HTML, JPG, PNG, etc.), but all we are interested in for Facebook are image.jpg and image.png.

2) The image.jpg file is compressed and doesn't look that great when you open the panorama in an enlarged view on FB, so I open the PNG in Photoshop and save it as a JPG with the least compression. I find that a 2046-pixel pano works fine; the smaller ones are not as crisp as I like.

3) Anyway, with an equilateral JPG in hand, head on over to www.thEXIFer.net to add the metadata that will tell Facebook that this is a 360-degree photo. Drag your image onto the (free) site's landing zone, and click on the EXIF.me button.

4) The ONLY metadata you need to add to a JPG are in the first two fields of the first screen of data. For Make enter "Ricoh" and for Model enter "Theta S"
ricoh.PNG

5) Click on the Go.eXifing button at the bottom of the page, download the resulting file, and post it to Facebook, which will realize from the camera model that this is an equirectangular panorama.

SOLVED EVEN EASIER: In File Explorer, right-click on the equirectangular JPG, select the Details tab, and change the camera make and model as above. 10 seconds. That's it. Upload to FB.