Spherical panorama compositing through depth estimation

Abstract

In this paper, we propose to work in the 2.5D space of the scene to facilitate composition of new spherical panoramas. For adding depths to spherical panoramas, we extend an existing method that was designed to estimate relative depths from a single perspective image through user interaction. We analyze the difficulties to interactively provide such depth information for spherical panoramas, through three different types of presentation. Then, we propose a set of basic tools to interactively manage the relative depths of the panoramas in order to obtain a composition in a very simple way. We conclude that the relative depths obtained by the extended depth estimation method are enough for the purpose of compositing new photorealistic panoramas through a few elementary editing tools.