Adding a nadir logo with text

For what it is...

The equirectangular projection is the starting point of several products.
This projection is extermly streched at zenith and nadir. An insertion of
a logo text isn't possible in one go or it looks distorted. in this tutorial
I show you a way to create such a remapped text that can be inserted directly
in an equirectangular panorama. The other advantage is that with this text you
don' need to remap the whole panorama. Every transformation results in quality
loss.

What do we need...

• Photoshop or a software that can run Photoshop actions (f. e. Gimp Win, Mac OSX, Unix )
• An equirectangular panorama (PSPhere, f. e. 6000 x 3000 pixels)
• Panotool plug-in for Photoshop created by Thomas Niemann (download here)
• Batch file to produce faces from an equirectangular pano(Pano2Faces.bat) and vice versa (Cube2Pano.bat) from Eric Gerds (download here)
• Photoshop action to create the mirror ball cap with white text plate (download cap_text.atn)
• Logo text as Photoshop file (download LogoText.psd)

Creating a pano with nadir cap

For this step you need the Photoshop action cap_text.atn to produce the
white plate for the logo text.



You have to stop the action when you areasked for the remapped text file.



Keep in mind the original size of your panorama (f. e. 6000 x 3000 pixels)
You will need this value later.


After this step the modified panorama looks like this:




You see a white area where the logo text will be inserted.

Remapping nadir

Here you can find two different ways to extract the nadir view for inserting a logo:

1.) With Panotools Plugins
2.) With extracting cube faces

Remapping nadir with PanoTools Plugins

First turn canvas by 180 degree:




Run Panotools plugin PTremap (Filter > ePaperPress > PTRemap):




With these settings and values below:




When you hitting button Prefs (Image above) it should look like this:



Whith these settings the remap plugin saves the remapped image in a new file.
This is really important because with every transformation of the panorama it
will loose quality. In this step we need only to see the mesure of the white
plate to transform the logo text to the right size.


The remapped view in which you can see the small white circular plate in the middle:




And here with a closer look:



You can see here also the 50 % grid of Photoshop which is a really good helper to align the circular text.
As you can see the crossing of the grid is exactly in the middle of the sphere.

Now it's time to be creative and think about your logo text.
Or you take the way trough an additional method to extract the nadir view.

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Inserting text

Open a prepared Photoshop text file to fill in like this (for download of an example click here):



As you can see the logo is flipped 90 degree counter clock wise.
This way the logo gets the right orientation when you remap it back to PSPhere.

Note: After changing the text to your needs you have to flatten these two
text layers to one layer!


Drag and drop this Photoshop logo file over the file with the nadir view
by holding the shift key to center the text. After this hit Ctrl+T to transform
text layer to the right size. By holding the shift+alt keys and pull on one of
the transform squares you can fit in the text to the white plate.




After this text transformations take a look at the layer palette in Photoshop.
Be aware that the text layer is on top and active for the next steps. This way we
we will only remap the text layer.

Remapping text back to PSPhere

Here you can find also two different ways to remap the logo text back to PSPhere (Eqirectangular projection):

1.) With Panotools Plugins (These steps have an addiotional transformation to the text because the plugin alter the size of the file while transforming)
2.) With extracting cube faces

Remapping text back to PSPhere with PanoTools Plugins

Run Panotools plugin PTremap (Filter > ePaperPress > PTRemap):




Settings for the re-transformation:




This is the remapped text without the pano as result from the remapping process:

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Reduce text file dimensions

Now it's time to remember the initial size of the panorama. In this example
I took a panorama with 6000 x 3000 pixels. When you go to Image > Imagesize...
you can see a slightly different size of thies resulting remap:





Change the values to the inital size of the panorama you have choosen.





One further step is to flip canvas back by 180 degree.
The text is now on the right position at the bottom:

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Preparing the text file for further use

The resulting text file should look like below. The only thing you see is the remapped text.





Note: Before you follow with the next steps you have to copy
background layer to a normal layer. Simply drag and drop background layer
over the new layer button at the bottom of the layer palette. After this
you have to delete background layer by drag and drop it over the trash bin also
at the bottom of this palette.



Now you are ready for the next steps...



You have to select and delete the white color with the wizzard stick tool or
with the color selection tool under menue selection:





In this tool select the white color with the color picker with a tolerance of 40:





Here you can see how the selected white area looks like.





Now you can just hit the delete button and you are done. Save this file with descriptive name.
(f. e. LogoTextRemapped_6000x3000.psd)

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Testing file size and position

Select the produced file with Ctrl+A (In image below: LogoTextNiaRemapped6k3k.psd)
and drag and drop it over the panorama with the white text plate by holding shift key
to center the file.

CapText_024.jpg

Flaten the resulting image to background.....



.....and save the panorama with the added text (Ctrl+Shift+S):



Now you can open the saved file in a prefered viewer (f. e. PTEditor)
to see how the nadir looks like. If it looks like this.....



You are done. Otherwise you probably made a mistake by following this tutorial
or you have to modify the size of the text file for a better fit.

How does it works now (PS action)

End of wiki tutorial

Images to use for tutorial (temporal)

CapText_028

CapText_029

CapText_030

CapText_031

CapText_032

CapText_033

CapText_034

CapText_035

CapText_036

CapText_037

CapText_038

CapText_039

CapText_040

CapText_041

CapText_042

CapText_043

CapText_044

CapText_045

CapText_046

Next time when you run the action on a panorama with the same size you don't have to cancel it, because you can use the above generated, remapped text file. Now you are able to produce this nadir logo in one go. You just have to guide the action to the remapped text file and your computer.