Scenes & images
What happens to an image when you upload it
It is re-encoded once and the original is not kept — so upload the good one.
An uploaded image is re-encoded once, as it arrives, and the file you sent is not kept. That makes it worth thirty seconds of thought before you upload, because it cannot be revisited afterwards.
Upload the best version you have
Do not shrink a photograph to "save space" first. Panova will size it for you, and it cannot put back detail that was gone before it arrived. Keep your masters wherever you keep the rest of your originals.
Two sizes, by what the image is for
- A backdrop fills a view — a scene background, a cover, a page hero — and keeps up to 4096px on the default quality setting.
- Anything inline sits inside a panel — a pin's media, an intro image — and keeps 1600px, which is more than a panel can show.
The distinction matters most for 360°. A viewer showing 90° of an equirectangular photo is showing a quarter of its width stretched across the whole screen, so a panorama needs far more pixels than a picture that will sit in a box.
A file uploaded straight to the asset library is treated as a backdrop, because it might end up behind a whole scene and guessing small there is the mistake that cannot be undone.
Changing the numbers
An organisation admin can move both, on Organisation → Settings. Space-saving trades sharpness for a smaller storage bill; best keeps more of what you sent. See Your organisation's defaults.
Rotation
Photographs taken on a phone or a 360° camera carry an orientation flag rather than being stored the right way up. Panova applies it on the way in, so an image that looked correct in your photo app looks correct on the scene.
- 1You choose a fileUpload, stock, or a web address
- 2Turned upside upPhone photos are rotated for you
- 3Resized and re-encodedTo WebP, at your plan’s quality
- 4StoredIn your asset library
A linked picture skips all of this
A picture you point at with a URL is not re-encoded, not resized and not stored — it stays on somebody else's server exactly as it is, which is also why it can disappear. Ticking Save a copy to my library on that tab brings it through the same path as an upload.