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Participating Frequently
Jul 23, 2026 3:25 PM UTC
Question

A Modern Workflow for Editing 360° Panoramas in Photoshop: How do you automate repetitive steps?

Many people were disappointed when Photoshop removed its 3D panorama features.

I've stitched and retouched over 10,000 panoramas, and honestly... I never used those features once.

Not because they weren't interesting, but because my workflow needed something entirely different: efficient batch processing.

Photoshop has always been an incredible image editor, while panorama-specific tasks such as projection conversion have traditionally been handled by specialized plugins.

For years, my workflow relied on Photoshop plugins. Each of them solved part of the problem, but none covered the entire workflow.

Some offered more flexibility but compromised on reprojection quality or introduced subtle brightness shifts after a round trip. Others produced excellent reprojections but were limited to standard cube faces or lacked panorama alignment tools.

As my projects became larger, three priorities gradually emerged.

First, I wanted the highest possible reprojection quality—with pixel-accurate round trips and consistent brightness.

Second, I wanted complete freedom when extracting perspective views—not just the six standard cube faces, but any viewing direction I needed for retouching.

Finally, I wanted to improve the workflow itself by eliminating repetitive manual tasks wherever they could be automated.

One area stood out in particular: interior and real estate panoramas.

These scenes often contain enough structural information—walls, corners, windows, and door frames—to estimate the correct horizon automatically.

Action PS for workflow 360 image edit

That observation led me to experiment with automatically leveling panoramas by detecting structural lines. Combined with Photoshop's batch processing, it removes yet another repetitive step from large panorama projects.

Over time, those ideas gradually came together and eventually became PanoFlatten.

A good workflow helps you edit a panorama.

A great workflow helps you stop repeating yourself.

I'm curious how others here approach large panorama projects.

Do you already have a batch workflow? Do you rely on Photoshop actions, plugins, or external software?

Which repetitive step do you wish could eliminate?

 

    4 replies

    thomas_bredenfeld
    Community Expert
    Community Expert
    Oct 19, 2026 10:12 AM UTC

    another extremely fast workflow is to use Pano2VR. it’s (of course) another app, but a lot of panographers use it anyway as they want to deliver web-ready 360° expoeriences / VR tours. here you can batch extract all floor views of a whole multi-panorama project and batch retouch them in PS without using any plugin and only using AI generative fill. if you don’t plan to use a VR tour tool like Pano2VR, the panoflatten PS plugin is the retouching tool of choice.

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    bellevue scott
    Inspiring
    Jul 23, 2026 7:11 PM UTC

    For 360 degree panorama, and even 2D panorama editing and stitching there is still nothing better than PTGUI. Quite often we use it for multishot phtotography. I used to use it for 360 panos on google maps but don’t do that as a service anymore. But I do still use PTGUI a lot for stitching multishot photos/scans. It’s far superior and faster than PS or LRC, does a better job, gives you more control, and does it faster. It’s also got batch and hot folder functions. If you’re doing this all the time you will save many hours and many f-bombs. I personally can’t do what I do without it. 

     

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    Participating Frequently
    Jul 23, 2026 7:23 PM UTC

    I completely agree—PTGui Pro is an essential part of my workflow too. I use it for stitching and batch panorama generation on every project.
    The workflow I was describing begins after PTGui, during the Photoshop stage. That's where I batch-process tasks such as nadir patching, perspective extraction, and—when working with interiors or real estate—automatic horizon leveling across multiple panoramas.
    So for me, it's not PTGui or Photoshop—it's PTGui plus Photoshop, with each handling the part it does best.

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    bellevue scott
    Inspiring
    Jul 23, 2026 7:33 PM UTC

    I see. I do remember trying to edit panoramas (equirectangular photos) in PS in Pano mode or the 360 mode and remember it being so difficult that I kind of gave up. I would also ways remove the nadire in PTGUI, edit in PS and put it back, but that’s exactly the kind of work flow you’re trying to eliminate. 

    Sorry I don’t have better answers. I quit doing these as the commercial value of them went away after Google made changes to google walk throughs and things like Matterport took over. 

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