NOTE: PanoPreviewer does not work properly with Photoshop CS4. We hope to have this issue resolved eventually, but for now use it with CS2 or CS3.

Download the PanoPreviewer plug-in

The plug-in will run in demo mode until a serial number is purchased (see below).

Click here to download PanoPreviewer

What it is

PanoPreviewer is a Photoshop plug-in for Mac OS X that allows you to preview equirectangular images as VR panoramas. Normally when editing an equirectangular image you're constantly saving the file out and loading it into a utility like CubicConverter so that you can preview it and see what needs touching up. With PanoPreviewer the tedium of that process has been eliminated since you can now preview the pano right in Photoshop!

How to Install It

The PanoPreviewer download contains two Photoshop files:

1. PanoPreviewer.plugin: This plug-in goes into your Photoshop CS2 or CS3 Plug-ins folder.

2. PanoPreviewer.atn: This is an optional Photoshop Action script that you load from the Actions window.

How to Use It

After installing PanoPreviewer you will see it in the Photoshop "Filters" menu:

Simply select the plug-in, and within a few seconds you'll see your panorama displayed in a VR window where you can click and drag on it to spin it around.

• To close the VR window either press any key on the keyboard or click the window's close dot.

• The VR preview window defaults to a small size, but you can resize it at any time by clicking and dragging in the lower-right corner where the resize box normally is in a window. To toggle between the small window and full-screen, simply click the green resize button in the window's titlebar.

• If you see rendering artifacts at the zenith and nadir poles of the pano, you can increase the sphere's rendering resolution by pressing the up-arrow key. The down-arrow key will lower the sphere resolution.

• The Command key will show a grid when held down. This grid is useful for determining if the scene is correctly leveled and if the horizon is really at the horizon.

Using the PanoPreviewer Action Script

If your equirectangular image has multiple layers then the layer that was selected is what you'll see in the preview window. To see the composited pano you would need to flatten the image or do some other task to get it into it's own layer. To make this easier for you, we have provided an Action script that will automatically Flatten the image, display it in PanoPreviewer, and then undo the Flatten when you're done.

If you assign the PanoPreviewer Action script to an F-key, then this whole process becomes very easy. All you'd have to do is tap, say, the F1 key and within seconds you've got your pano up and running with no other effort needed on your part!

Technical Requirements

PanoPreviewer should work with Photoshop CS 2 and/or CS 3 running on Mac OS X. It us a Universal Binary plug-in which means that it will run natively on either PowerPC or Intel based Macs. The image quality of the pano previews will depend on the quality of your video card. The more VRAM you have the better. If you have 32MB or less VRAM then the image quality will be poor, but if you have 64MB or more then it should be good. The best image quality is achieved with 128MB or more VRAM, and that's what we recommend.