How to Make 3D Motion Pictures for Facebook: Tutorial

Fabulous images with depth on facebook

More and more we find this enriched format: images with motion blur that gives us a more immersive experience known today as 3D Photos for Facebook.

Check in this link the 2020 digital trends so that you are always up to date with your Facebook content

Portrait mode Iphone: How to Make 3D Motion Pictures for Facebook: Tutorial

3D photos is an exclusive format for high-end iOS cell phones such as iPhone 7 Plus , 8 Plus , X , XS and XS Max.

Just take a photo, play with the focus and get the effect, which is generated when you post on Facebook through the mobile application.

This opened the possibility of adapting any image to 3D as if it had been taken by the iPhone lens, so the topic of this post is to explain how this is done:

Remember that you must have a good internet connection, the latest version of your Facebook application  to have the 3D experience.

We will use any PC or Mac with Photoshop but the ONLY way to publish a 3D Photo is with an iPhone 7 Plus , 8 Plus , X , XS or XS Max .

There is no code, procedure, emulator or anything like that that can mimic an iPhone. So give up on the search for “tricks” to publish it from your computer or Android, it does not exist.

It’s easier for you to ask an acquaintance with an iPhone to post the image for you, period, keep it simple. Without further ado …

We start with the tutorial: How to Make 3D Motion Pictures for Facebook: Tutorial

Select an image: How to Make 3D Motion Pictures for Facebook: Tutorial

It must be an image with well-defined photographic planes and high resolution, that is, the distances in the image are well defined; the foreground is the closest object, a second plane would be what is behind it, etc.

In my example, Superman is in the foreground, his cape in second, the Dailly Planet in third, and the buildings in the background in fourth.

Prepare your image in Photoshop

Go into Photoshop and create a 3000X4000 px canvas. For this reason, a good size image is important to be able to mount without being pixelated and we can define the planes.

Deep maps

A depth map is a reading of the image in which based on the pixels it is determined how far or near the objects are. When the images are taken with professional lenses (in this case iPhone) it is easy for Photoshop to find depth maps.

But we are not going to use a photo, but to make Facebook believe that our image is a photo by inserting certain metadata in our design. But don’t worry, it’s much easier than it sounds, we won’t have to use any code with this method:

• First we separate the image into planes, one layer per plane; we select and duplicate with CTRL + J to isolate in a new layer the selected object with each plane

• We are going to color each plane with grayscale, white is more prominent in the image and black is more in the background. Remember that Facebook only reads 4 plans in 3D Photo.

My Superman must be blank, to indicate to the depth map that this object is in front of everything.

• Once we finish our depth map, we will save it as a JPEG

Save as

We save the original image that we download from the internet or build as a JPG, which would result in 2 photos completely symmetrical with each other, the heat map and the original.

It is important to maintain this symmetry, because if there are empty parts in your depth map or if you moved something and the images do not match, there will be terrible spots .

Insert metadata

The depth map that we create is so that we can put that information into the image. With our depth map in JPG and the original design we go to this page:

• We load original

• We load Depth Map

• We accept terms, conditions and generate. Don’t worry if the preview looks bad, it doesn’t look like this on Facebook. You will have to go testing and adjusting.

To post it on Face

The page will show a link, click on it and in a separate tab it opens the image from where we can download the final product with the metadata already compressed into the image.

In this step many are wrong, so read carefully: Copy the link and open it from the iPhone with Safari and save in the gallery.

If you use Mac download by opening the link (use Safari ) then right click> “save as” and pass it to the iPhone with AirDrop .

Do not change its name, do not send it by mail or by any type of message, do not put it to the usb, do not upload it to the cloud or save it on an Android or on any iPhone other than those mentioned, because otherwise it will stop function.

Since it’s on the iPhone, open your Facebook application, select 3D Photo, upload it (it may take a while to load) AND DONE.

tip

The image is cropped when uploading it, create a margin on your Photoshop canvas with 500 px top / bottom and 160 px on the sides, as long as you avoid that area your photos will not be cut 😉

To finish the tutorial I ask you to review the video explanation to complement and clarify your doubts as well as to help me by subscribing and sharing the material.