Hi, I am wondering how to mask the tripod when I take 28 photos to make one panoramic photo. Most answers I read are for panoramic photos taken with fisheyes lenses and comprising around 7 photos. In this method, the photographer takes an hand-held photo of the nadir and hides the tripod using the "cut and paste method" in photographic software like Photoshop, before stitching it.

I don't use a fisheye lens so I have to take 3 sets of 9 photos, at 40 degrees intervals horizontally (9X40=360 degrees). The first serie is tilted towards the ground at around 40 degrees (so I dont photograph the tripod), the second at around 10 degrees (close to horizontal) and the third at around 50 degrees (pointing upwards). I then take a last photo perfectly aimed at Zenith (top of the bubble). When I stitch all those photos in PTGui Pro, the tripod doesn't show and there is a nonagonal (nine sides) figure masking it. When I generate a QuickTIme VR file (.MOV file) in PTGui Pro, I lock the "tilt" at around -65 degrees so the viewer doesn't have access to the "bottom" of the bubble. This is a quite elegant "work around" but it is useless when I generate a JPEG file, as requested in 360cities.net (the JPEG shows the black nonagonal figure).

My question is: How can I replace this nonagonal figure with an advertising or a small "planet-like" photo in the finished JPEG photo (resulting of 28 stiched photos) ?