Back to Support / Building a hike
Uploading your own photos, using photos you found elsewhere, using a photo again on another stop or hike, and removing or deleting one.
A hike can carry photos of its own, added on the Marketing step, and photos on each stop, added on the Stories & quizzes step. Every photo comes from one of two places, and each has its own requirements. Once a photo is uploaded you can use it again on other stops and hikes; see Using a photo again.
If you took the photo yourself, uploading it asks you to tick one box. By ticking it, you confirm all of these:
The box starts unticked, and the photo can't be uploaded until you tick it. You can upload several of your own photos at once, and add a caption to describe what's in them. One tick covers every photo in that upload.
This is on top of the ownership and CC BY-SA 4.0 license that already applies to everything you add to a hike — see Who owns what you add.
A photo you didn't take — from Wikimedia Commons, Flickr, or another public source — can still go on a hike, as long as its license allows reuse. Upload it exactly as you found it — don't crop, filter or otherwise edit it first. When you add one, you provide:
Only licenses that actually allow reuse are offered: public domain, CC0, and the Creative Commons attribution licenses. A photo marked All Rights Reserved, non-commercial, or no-derivatives can't be added here — its license doesn't permit it.
You confirm that the license you picked is correct and does allow this use.
Creator name, creator link and license are fixed once the photo is added.
A photo you've uploaded stays yours to use. You don't upload it a second time to put it on another stop or another hike.
Press Add photo on a stop, or Add a hike photo on the Marketing step, and open the Your photos tab. It lists every photo you've uploaded, newest first, 24 to a page, including photos that aren't on any hike right now: ones you removed, and ones left behind when you deleted a stop or a whole hike. If you delete a hike to start over, its photos are waiting here for the new one.
A photo that's under review after a report isn't listed until the review is finished. You can still delete it: press the pencil on its tile on the hike it's on, then Delete this photo everywhere.
Under each photo is where it's used: the hikes it's on, or Not on a hike.
Choose one photo or several, then press Add to this stop or Add to this hike. There's nothing to fill in: the credit and license were set when the photo was uploaded, and they go with it. A photo that's already on that stop or hike is marked and can't be added twice.
The same limits apply as for uploads (see Limits). The tab says how many more photos the stop or hike can take, and won't let you choose more than that.
You can only add photos you uploaded yourself. Another member's photo isn't offered, even when it's on a hike you maintain.
Once a photo is uploaded, its caption is the only thing you can change. Press the pencil under one of the hike's own photos on the Marketing step, or on a photo on the stop it's on, and edit the caption there. You can also press the pencil on a photo in the Your photos tab, which is how you change the caption of a photo that isn't on a hike you maintain.
A photo has one caption. If it's on several stops or hikes, changing the caption changes it on all of them. Like any other edit, a new caption reaches a published hike's public page when that hike is next published; until then the page keeps the caption it was published with.
You can take a photo off at any time, own or found alike: press its trash button and confirm with Remove from this stop, or Remove from this hike for one of the hike's own photos on the Marketing step.
Removing a photo takes it off that one stop or hike in your draft. On a published hike, the public page keeps showing it until you publish again. It stays on any other stop or hike it's on, and it doesn't delete the photo: the photo is kept with the account that uploaded it. Deleting a stop does the same for every photo on it. A photo that's on no hike at all is still with its uploader, under Your photos.
If you remove a photo someone else uploaded, you can't add it back from your photos. The confirmation says so before you remove it. Restoring a version that has the photo puts it back (see Going back).
Deleting is different from removing: it takes the photo off every stop and hike it's on, and it can't be added to a hike again. It leaves your photos and every hike's draft right away. A published hike keeps showing it until that hike is published again, and the photo is deleted once no public page shows it. Only the person who uploaded a photo can delete it.
There are two places to do it:
Either way you're told how many hikes the photo is on and asked to confirm.
One exception: a photo you put on a hike that someone else now maintains stays with that hike, so it can't be deleted while it's there. You can still take it off your own hikes. See Maintaining a hike. This applies only where you added the photo yourself. If your photo is on a hike you don't maintain and you didn't put it there, you can still delete it everywhere.
A deleted photo is gone from the site and from your photos. We keep the original file on record, as we do for other deleted content. To have it erased as well, use the contact form.
If a photo's credit is wrong — the wrong creator, the wrong license, or anything else about it — report the photo. See Reporting a photo below.
Next to a photo itself, a short line names its caption and who took or found it. Open the photo for the full credit — the same line, with the creator's name linked and the license linked to its terms.
The hero is the large banner at the top of the hike's page, also used on the hike's card. Choose it at the top of the Marketing step, which shows every photo on the hike in one place: the hike's own photos first, then each stop's photos, in walking order. Press any of them and it becomes the hero straight away. The preview beside them shows it cropped and titled the way the public banner will be. Remove hero clears it.
If the hike has no photos yet, add one right there with Add a hike photo, or add photos to your stops on the Stories & quizzes step; either kind can be the hero. The first photo you add on the Marketing step becomes the hero if there isn't one yet. You can also make a stop photo the hero from the stop itself, with the star on the photo.
Removing the hero photo from the hike clears the setting. A hero photo adds to the hike's completeness score on Review & publish, but a hike can be published without one.
Anyone viewing a hike — signed in or not — can heart a photo they like. The count is shown alongside it.
Anyone can report a photo — for the wrong credit, or for any of the same reasons a hike itself can be reported. Reporting a photo takes it down from public view right away, everywhere it's shown, while our team looks into it. It reappears if we find nothing wrong.
While a photo is under review, it still appears in your own builder — marked Under review, with its caption but no image — so you know it's there. You can still edit its caption, or remove it, but it can't be chosen as the hero photo until it's cleared. If we find nothing wrong, it reappears everywhere on its own; there's nothing for you to do.
Photos go at full quality, including a phone's full-resolution original. There's no need to resize one yourself. If a photo is larger than the site accepts (the upload dialog shows the size), your browser makes it smaller before sending it, only as much as it needs to, and says Preparing photo… while it does. Where and when the photo was taken stay with it. The site then scales it down automatically for display.
A hike can have 40 photos of its own, on top of what each stop carries. A stop can have 5 photos from its maintainers: everyone who maintains or has maintained the hike shares that one allowance. A photo added from Your photos counts the same as one you upload. A photo you remove frees its place.
A photo that's under review after a report keeps its place until our team has looked at it, even if you remove it or delete it: it stops counting once it's cleared or taken down.
Removing a photo, like every other edit, reaches a published hike's public page when you publish.