What Is an Edit Document?
When you initiate an editing session in PanoView Editor by clicking Edit This View, the plugin extracts your specified spherical angle into a dedicated perspective Photoshop document.
You do not edit the equirectangular panorama directly inside this document. Directly retouching an equirectangular canvas forces you to paint across non-linear latitude stretching and polar distortion. Instead, the edit document provides a true rectilinear perspective view where lines remain straight and standard Photoshop brushes behave normally.
This perspective document is opened in Photoshop as a separate document tab, allowing you to use your complete creative toolset without worrying about spherical math or seam wrapping.
Document Role & Lifecycle
The perspective edit document serves as an intermediate retouching workspace. Its position in the end-to-end PanoView Editor pipeline follows a rigorous lifecycle:
2:1 equirectangular image open in Photoshop.
Rectilinear perspective patch generated at target angle.
Difference projected back to panorama as managed layer.
Internal Layer Architecture
To calculate seamless spherical remapping, PanoView Editor automatically initializes two managed layers inside every perspective edit document:
360 Edit
The primary layer designated for your creative work. All cloning, healing, brushwork, and corrective retouching should occur on or above this layer.
Background/Reference
The immutable baseline representing the original extracted perspective. PanoView Editor uses this layer to perform differential pixel comparisons during reprojection.
Photoshop perspective edit document showing the managed Background/Reference and 360 Edit layer structure.
Photoshop PSB Workflow
PanoView Editor packages perspective edit documents as embedded Large Document Format (PSB) Smart Objects inside your main Photoshop panorama session:
Self-Contained Storage
Because the edit document lives as an embedded Smart Object within your master PSD or PSB, your panorama project contains all working layers in a single self-contained file. No disconnected external assets or sidecar files are generated.
Color Profile & Bit Depth Continuity
The perspective document is designed to preserve the color environment and native bit depth (RGB 8-bit or 16-bit) of your source panorama, maintaining visual consistency across your editing workflow.
Session Relationship & Safety Guidelines
To ensure that PanoView Editor can reliably detect your modifications and map them back into spherical space, adhere to these golden safety rules:
Background/Reference layer. Altering this layer corrupts the differential baseline needed to isolate your edits.