My experiences taking photos for Panoramax - General talk - OpenStreetMap Community Forum

My experiences taking photos for Panoramax - General talk - OpenStreetMap Community Forum
My experiences taking photos for Panoramax
General talk
panoramax
mbuege
April 7, 2026, 8:48pm
Hello, my name is Michael. I’ve been part of OSM for almost 20 years and have been gaining experience in creating 360° images for Panoramax for over two years.
I thought it was now time to put my experiences down in writing.
Images for Panoramax: Equipment and Techniques - OpenStreetMap Wiki
My wiki editing and translation skills aren’t particularly strong, so perhaps someone could help improve my attempt.
There are a number of other points to add, particularly in the section on mounts and tripods.
The graphics and images of settings in applications mostly contain German text. It will take a while before I have created adequate English versions.
Everyone is warmly invited to discuss, add to and improve the content.
11 Likes
silversurfer83
(silversurfer83)
April 7, 2026, 8:50pm
Thank you for writing things down so we can all build upon your experience.
5 Likes
aharvey
(Andrew Harvey)
April 7, 2026, 9:25pm
Nice guide. Two things from my similar efforts 9 years ago at
GitHub - andrewharvey/lg360-mapillary-helpers: Scripts to help automate processing lg360 Mapillary images for upload · GitHub
that might be of interest.
When creating the nidar mask, you could create an average image from a large sample of images, eg with
lg360-mapillary-helpers/lg360_maskhelp at master · andrewharvey/lg360-mapillary-helpers · GitHub
hence when you’re creating the mask you can see a more representative image.
I find that inpainting the masked nidar area provides a nicer visual compared with filling it with a solid colour. I do this with gmic’s inpaint matchpaint via
lg360-mapillary-helpers/lg360_inpaint at master · andrewharvey/lg360-mapillary-helpers · GitHub
UW_Amy_Bordenave
(Amy Bordenave)
April 7, 2026, 9:43pm
Thank you for sharing!
Similarly, I created
this utility
to apply a mask on imagery from our Mapillary Camera Grant GoPro Max.
cquest
(Christian Quest (OSMFR-Panoramax))
April 7, 2026, 9:48pm
Thanks for sharing your experiences !
Also about nadir… I shared 2 command lines to done it, starting from a standard PNG, reprojecting it and applying it without JPEG recompression (preserving the original picture quality)
Ajouter un logo en bas (nadir) des photos à 360°
Panoramax : photo-cartographions les territoires
Technique
tutoriel
Je viens de tester l’ajout d’un logo en bas des photos 360°… et ça rend pas mal du tout ! La recette magique: convertir le logo (qui doit être une image carrée) en version “equirectangulaire” avec imagemagick remplacer le bas de l’image (bien...
Reading time: 2 mins 🕑
Likes: 17 ❤
Reproject the nadir PNG:
convert panoramax-logo.png -rotate 180 -distort DePolar 0 -flip -flop -geometry 5760x576! -sampling-factor 2x1 nadir-5760.jpg
Apply it on your pictures:
jpegtran -copy all -optimize -trim -drop +0+2304 nadir-5760.jpg original.jpg > nouvelle.jpg
Dimensions are valid for Gopro Max 360 pictures resolution (5760x2880) and need to be adapted for other resolutions.
We plan to add nadir automatically in a near future on Panoramax upload API.
1 Like
mbuege
April 8, 2026, 2:44pm
Thank you all very much for your replies!
It seems there are a number of ways to resolve the issue with the nadir.
aharvey:
I find that inpainting the masked nidar area provides a nicer visual compared with filling it with a solid colour.
I completely agree with you.
Actually I don’t fill areas with a single colour; I only did so in the Wiki to illustrate the process.
I usually use patterns that I create from an area near the nadir. This works quite well, but if the type of road surface changes, it looks less elegant. It’s nothing dramatic, but if there were better solutions…
The possibility of creating a pattern that incorporates elements from several images in a series is very interesting. Thank you very much for the script.
My journey for cover the nadir took me from initial hardware solutions…
Panoramax OSM-FR - photo-cartographier les territoires
L'instance Panoramax d'OpenStreetMap France, permet la publication de photos de terrain pour cartographie les territoires.
…and simple patches with text on them…
Panoramax OSM-FR - photo-cartographier les territoires
L'instance Panoramax d'OpenStreetMap France, permet la publication de photos de terrain pour cartographie les territoires.
…through to very understated designs…
Panoramax OSM-FR - photo-cartographier les territoires
L'instance Panoramax d'OpenStreetMap France, permet la publication de photos de terrain pour cartographie les territoires.
…and those linked to an event with custom text.
Panoramax OSM-FR - photo-cartographier les territoires
L'instance Panoramax d'OpenStreetMap France, permet la publication de photos de terrain pour cartographie les territoires.
Throughout the entire process I learnt a lot about GIMP, its capabilities and how to use it. And although designing the nadir cover – beyond simply filling it with colour – is purely a matter of GIMP expertise, I think I’ll describe these methods in the wiki as well.
Ideally, I’d like to be able to edit the desired area of each image in the same way as you can e.g. with the Heal Selection Tool in GIMP. Or perhaps something using AI capabilities, who knows…
But I think that, for now, the easy-to-use tools we have at our disposal are sufficient to achieve good results for a variety of needs.
cquest:
We plan to add nadir automatically in a near future on Panoramax upload API.
That’s brilliant news!
2 Likes
dieterdreist
(Martin Koppenhöfer)
April 8, 2026, 5:36pm
mbuege:
Or perhaps something using AI capabilities
please don’t, better a clearly covered area (e.g. white, black or blurred) than having a part of the image invented
5 Likes
cquest
(Christian Quest (OSMFR-Panoramax))
April 9, 2026, 5:46am
Oh yes !!!
No GenAI should be used to modify or generate pictures shared on Panoramax.
This would create a mess when we use computer vision later for detection or other purposes.
We started a topic about this on the forum.
2 Likes
tallcoleman
(Tallcoleman)
April 12, 2026, 2:52pm
Thanks for doing these write-ups!
I really like mounting the camera directly on the helmet. It’s simple and easy and in most cases removes the need to add a nadir in post-processing.
One quick PSA for this kind of mount: if your helmet has MIPS, make sure that the way you attach your camera doesn’t lock the MIPS part to the helmet. (In a crash, you want the MIPS section to move freely to absorb some of the impact.)
Video linked as an example:
Helmet mounting camera and MIPS safety - Album on Imgur
1 Like
mbuege
April 12, 2026, 7:01pm
10
As I don’t have a helmet to hand, I haven’t had any experience with this.
However, I think it’s a very simple and very common way of mounting a camera.
Perhaps we should compile the various aspects of this type of mounting and add them to the wiki as well.
I’d be happy to add the relevant information and media to the wiki.
mbuege
April 21, 2026, 10:28pm
11
Today I’ve found time to give the ‘
Mounts and Tripods
’ section a quick update.
1 Like
Peter_Elderson
(Peter Elderson)
April 21, 2026, 11:06pm
12
mbuege:
As I don’t have a helmet to hand, I haven’t had any experience with this.
However, I think it’s a very simple and very common way of mounting a camera.
Perhaps we should compile the various aspects of this type of mounting and add them to the wiki as well.
I’d be happy to add the relevant information and media to the wiki.
I did some testing with a helmet mounted 360 camera. To get the camera high enough I used a gooseneck. It was very hard to get it stable on the helmet, especially the sideways stability was a problem. I used tiewraps to fix the helmet mount tight enough, but then the whole helmet turned sidewayson my head, because of the high placed weight. I had to fill the room in the helmet completely (used some baseball caps) and pulled the helmet straps really really tight to make it stable enough… only to find that when hiking, the camera had to be lowered very often because of the vegetation and other low passages.
In short, my experiences were not that great, I would not recommend a helmet mount. Even if you don’t mind being shunned by everyone you meet, because you look ridiculous, walking with a helmet and gooseneck.
Edit:
If you mount the camera directly on the helmet, it’s much more stable, but you always have yourself in the picture instead of what you walk on. For my purpose, documenting hiking routes, this ws not acceptable, I wanted a much smaller visible ground circle, meaning: higher camera position.
cquest
(Christian Quest (OSMFR-Panoramax))
April 23, 2026, 11:46am
13
Keeping the camera horizontal is a real issue when mounting it on an helmet… but we are testing Panoflat, a bot that computes pitch and roll on 360° pictures and modifies metadata to have them displayed correctly.
1 Like