Publish panoramas to Google Street View

The short answer

The Publish tab's Google Street View pane sends the panoramas you choose to Google Street View, through your own Google account. Each panorama needs a map location. Panoramr turns its original photo into a Photo Sphere JPEG, which is a JPEG that carries the data saying it is a full 360 degree panorama, and sends it with the location.

What you need

• A Google account that may publish to Street View. You connect it from the pane, and Google's own page asks you to allow the access.
• Access to the tour's Publish tab: the owner, and by default an Admin collaborator. Each person connects their own Google account. An account whose email address is not confirmed can be held back: see Why can't I publish my tour?.
• A location for each panorama, a latitude and a longitude: see Add a location to a panorama.
• The tour does not have to be published. Street View receives panoramas, not the tour.

Connect and publish

1. Open the tour, click the Publish tab, then Google Street View (in the Advanced view: click Advanced at the right end of the tab row if the pane is not in the list).
2. Click Connect Google Account and allow the access on Google's page. You come back to this pane, which shows Google Account Connected with your Google email address.
3. Optional: under Link to Google Maps Business (Optional), type at least three characters of the business name, press Enter or click Search, and click a result. The list is from Google Maps and says so at its foot. Place Selected appears. Choosing a business also saves the other settings on the Publish tab, as Save Settings does.
4. Under Select Panoramas to Publish, every panorama that has a location and is not on Street View yet is already ticked. Untick the ones you do not want, or click Select All Unpublished. A photo cannot be taken off Street View from Panoramr.
5. Click Publish Selected. A bar at the top says Publishing to Google Street View has started in the background. High-resolution images may take a few moments to upload. It disappears after about three seconds.

What Panoramr sends

For each panorama, one job on Panoramr's server:

1. Takes the panorama's original file, the one you uploaded, and removes the camera and location data it carries.
2. Changes it only as far as Google needs: it converts a PNG or WebP to a JPEG, turns a photo upright, stretches one that is within 5% of twice as wide as tall to exactly 2:1, makes one over 100 megapixels smaller, and compresses a JPEG that is over 75 MB.
3. Adds the Photo Sphere data: a full 360 by 180 degree equirectangular picture, and the compass heading of its middle. The heading is the one Calibrate Radar saved, measured from the top of the floor plan: it is a true compass heading only if the top of that plan points north. A panorama that was never calibrated is sent with 0, so its middle is declared to face north. Pitch and roll are not sent.
4. Uploads the JPEG to Google's Street View Publish service, then creates the photo with the panorama's latitude and longitude and the business you chose.

The location is the one you set on the panorama, not the photo's own GPS position, which Panoramr keeps for you alone. No title, description, hotspot or tile is sent.

What each panorama needs

What you see on each panorama

• Waiting to publish...: the job is queued and has not started.
• Publishing...: the job is running. It can run for up to 15 minutes.
• Could not publish: and a reason: it failed. Fix the cause, then tick the panorama and publish it again.
• Already Published, with a link, View on Maps, to the address Google returned.

While any panorama is on its way, the pane asks again every four seconds for up to 15 minutes. After that, reload the page.

Messages

The reason after Could not publish: starts like this. Some messages tell you to use "the Google Maps & Street View tab": that is this pane, Google Street View in the Publish tab's list.

What is not offered

• No button removes a photo from Street View.
• Disconnect only removes Panoramr's stored link to your Google account. It does not remove anything already published.
• There is no button to clear the business you chose. Choosing another replaces it.

Troubleshooting

The panoramas wait for a long time. Publishing runs as a background job on Panoramr's server. If they stay on Waiting to publish... for many minutes, the job has not started: contact us and say which tour.

A bar at the top says Please connect your Google account first. Click Connect Google Account.

A bar says None of those panoramas is left to publish: they are on Street View already, or are not in this tour. Every panorama you chose is published, or is not in this tour.

A bar says None of those panoramas has a location on the map, so Google cannot place them. Set one for each first. Set the locations. These bars disappear after about three seconds; the reason stays under each panorama.

Connecting ends with Failed to connect Google account. and a reason. The connection did not complete. Click Connect Google Account and try again. If it repeats, contact us with the reason.

Searching for a business shows an alert that starts Google Places Search Error:. The words after the colon say why: the search is switched off, has no key set up, has reached its monthly limit, or Google refused the request. You cannot change any of these. The business is optional, so you can publish without it.