StereoPhoto Maker & Apple Vision Pro Spatial Photos
Apple Vision Pro displays “spatial photos”, and iPhones shoot them as HEIC stereo pairs — the same pairs StereoPhoto Maker has handled since v6.40 through its bundled spphotolib library. This guide covers the practical loop: get spatial photos into SPM, work on them, and get stereo images back out in forms a Vision Pro owner can view.
From iPhone to SPM
- Transfer the original .heic file (not a converted JPEG copy) to your Windows machine.
- Open it in SPM — the pair loads as left/right views (setup details in the iPhone spatial photos tutorial).
- Align, set the window, and save a side-by-side master.
What SPM adds to the Apple pipeline
- Real alignment tools — Apple’s capture assumes the phone’s fixed geometry; SPM corrects pairs from any source.
- Conversions between containers: MPO, JPS, side-by-side, anaglyph and interlaced from the same master.
- Depth-map extraction from HEIC portrait photos (v6.41) for depth-based uses — see the depth-map guide.
Viewing SPM output on Vision Pro
Vision Pro works with standard stereo formats; a clean side-by-side master from SPM is the safe interchange file, convertible to whatever a given viewer app prefers. Keep the master, convert copies — the same discipline as every other platform on this site.
SPM works with spatial photos. iPhone spatial video (MV-HEVC) is a different pipeline and outside SPM’s scope; its sibling program StereoMovie Maker is the author’s video tool.
Vision Pro is Apple’s headset; the mainstream alternative covered here is the Meta Quest 3, which also displays SPM side-by-side output.
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