Photo-to-360 conversion is useful when you have a normal image but need a spherical environment. A single room photo, travel snapshot, product set, or architectural render can become a full 2:1 equirectangular panorama that opens in a 360° viewer.
Use the Photo to 360° Converter when the source image matters. The AI uses it as an anchor for palette, material, lighting, and mood while generating the missing view around it.
Pick the right source photo
The best source photos have enough context for the model to infer the rest of the scene.
Good inputs:
- Wide-angle interior photos
- Street corners and landscapes
- Architectural renders
- Product sets with visible background context
- Travel photos with clear horizon and lighting
Risky inputs:
- Extreme close-ups
- Cropped objects with no environment
- Heavy motion blur
- Overexposed windows or blown-out skies
- Photos where the desired surrounding space is ambiguous
If the source photo only shows a chair, the AI has to guess the room. If it shows the chair, wall, floor, light direction, and window, the extrapolation becomes much more stable.
Use 1-3 references intentionally
One reference is enough for many conversions. Add a second or third only when they provide useful context:
- A second angle of the same room
- A close material reference
- A lighting reference
- An exterior view that should influence windows or openings
Do not upload three unrelated images and expect a precise composite. The model will try to reconcile conflicting cues, which can reduce coherence.
Add a short steering prompt
The prompt should not rewrite the whole image. It should clarify what the missing 270° should feel like.
Good:
warm evening light, quiet boutique hotel lobby, polished stone floor,
plants and soft seating continuing around the roomToo broad:
make it futuristic and cinematic and beautifulToo restrictive:
exactly preserve every object and add three identical doors on each wallUse 10-30 words. Mention mood, season, time of day, or the kind of surrounding space you expect.
Preview before exporting
After generation, inspect the result in the embedded sphere viewer:
- Rotate all the way around.
- Check whether the original image direction still feels anchored.
- Look at the left/right wrap seam.
- Look up and down for pole distortion.
- Confirm the scene does not repeat obvious objects unnaturally.
If the first attempt is close but not perfect, adjust the prompt rather than changing everything. For example:
keep the same warm indoor lightingmake the surrounding walls simpleravoid duplicated windowsadd more floor and ceiling continuity
How to make a 360° photo on your phone (iPhone & Android)
You do not need a dedicated 360° camera to take a 360 photo. Both iPhone and Android can capture something usable, but the built-in options have real limits worth knowing before you shoot.
iPhone
The stock Camera app has a Pano mode, and panorama is not the same thing as a sphere: it sweeps horizontally and gives you a wide strip, usually somewhere between 3:1 and 10:1, with no ceiling and no floor. That strip cannot go straight into a 360° viewer. For a genuine full sphere on iOS, use the Street View photo-sphere capture inside the Google Maps app (Google retired the standalone Street View app) — it guides you through a grid of shots and stitches them into a 2:1 equirectangular file on the device. Hold the phone close to your body, pivot around the lens rather than around yourself, and keep the horizon level.
Android
Android works the same way. Some manufacturer camera apps ship a Panorama or Surround Shot mode that produces the same wide strip, and a few Pixel and Samsung builds have offered photo sphere capture directly. Where they haven't, the Street View capture in the Google Maps app covers the same ground and exports the same equirectangular result. Shoot in even light, avoid moving subjects near the seams, and take all the frames in one continuous pass so exposure stays consistent.
If the stitch fails, or you only came home with one ordinary frame, upload that frame to the Photo to 360° Converter instead. It keeps your source photo as the anchor and generates the missing view around it — no re-shoot, no stitching software.
One clarification: making a 360 photo of an object is a different technique. Turntable-style spins photograph a product from many angles and play back as an orbit video or a spin viewer, looking at an object from outside. An equirectangular panorama does the opposite — it looks out from a single point in every direction — so none of the workflows on this page apply to product spins.
Where to publish: Facebook, Google Maps & the web
A finished equirectangular file is only half the job. Each platform has its own upload requirements.
Facebook renders a photo as an interactive 360° view only when two conditions hold: the image is a true 2:1 equirectangular, and it carries 360 photo XMP metadata (ProjectionType=equirectangular). Files exported from AI tools or re-saved in an image editor usually lose that metadata. Put it back with the 360° Metadata Injector before uploading. If the post still shows a flat image, work through Facebook 360 photo not working, which lists the aspect-ratio, metadata, and file-size causes in order.
Google Maps
Google Maps Street View accepts user-contributed spheres, but publishing goes through Google's own tools — the Street View feature in the Google Maps app, or an approved third-party publisher. The image itself has to be a 2:1 equirectangular with correct XMP metadata, and Google enforces a minimum resolution, so export at 4K rather than 1K. Google's policies also favour photos of real places: a generated scene is fine as a personal panorama, but it is not appropriate to publish as Street View imagery of a real location.
The web
For your own site, embed or share it directly. Drop the file into the 360° Panorama Viewer to confirm it renders correctly and to get a shareable link, or load the same PNG into Three.js, Pannellum, or Photo Sphere Viewer inside your own page.
Making a 360° image from scratch (no photo)
If you don't have a source photo at all, skip the conversion workflow entirely. The 360 Image Maker creates a full spherical image from a text description — describe the scene, pick a resolution, and generate. It accepts optional reference photos too, so it's the right starting point when your idea matters more than any specific source image.
When to use text-to-panorama instead
Use Text to Panorama AI when you do not need to preserve a source image. It is better for imagined spaces, fast concepts, and creative variations.
Use photo-to-360 when:
- The reference photo is the point.
- You need matching lighting or palette.
- You want to extend a real or rendered location.
- The result should feel connected to existing material.
Export resolution tips
Use 1K for fast tests, 2K for web previews, and 4K when the result will be inspected on desktop, large displays, or headset-style viewers. Every tier outputs the same 2:1 equirectangular format; only the pixel dimensions change.
For final QA, drag the downloaded file into the Free 360° Panorama Viewer. This lets you verify the downloaded image outside the generator flow before sending it to a client or embedding it elsewhere.
