Talk:Photo linking
General landscape photos
User takes a picture in the middle of the woods (i.e., just a landscape photo and not a photo of a points of interest mappable object) at coordinates X,Y , and makes it available at URL Z.
Can the photo be marked in OSM? How to? Jidanni (talk) 00:42, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
- If photo still can be associated to an object (even if it's not the main subject of the picture but still visible), can be associated using
image=*or similar. If no object can be used to make the link, then it might not have its place in OSM. However, one can still create an interactive map, using OSM tiles or data, and showing a layer with geolocated pictures. --PanierAvide (talk) 06:58, 13 May 2018 (UTC)
Multiple photos
I want to attach multiple photos to 1 feature. Specifically, photos of 1 hiking node, taken from up to 4 sides and 2 distances, so up to 8 photos.
How can I do that? Do I need to use a photo application that needs 1 url to return a series of photos, or can I enter multiple urls in the tag like image=url1, url2, url3; or numbered tags like image:1=url1; image:2=url2
If not foreseen at the moment, what would be the way to go?
--Peter Elderson (talk) 19:00, 26 July 2018 (UTC)[Peter Elderson]
- Numbered tag image_1=* image_2=* ... with a default image=* might be a good solution, as semicolon might be confused as URL character --PanierAvide (talk) 19:08, 26 July 2018 (UTC)
- This practice is not very appreciate in OSM
cyclestreets_id
cyclestreets_id is another photo tagging system you may wish to include. It is only the id, not the full URL, so multiple id's can be entered.
Ephemeral hosters
I've just learnt that some apps like MapComplete used ephemeral hosters like imgur.com to upload images, presumably to avoid having to handle authentication. Those images are vanishing: https://github.com/pietervdvn/MapComplete/issues/1451
Do we have a bot already to migrate images to more permanent locations, or at least check that the URLs are archived by the wayback machine? Nemo (talk) 09:20, 23 July 2023 (UTC)
- Yes, please see the discussion at https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/imgur-is-going-to-delete-old-images/98229 --Strubbl (talk) 07:53, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
- I rather perceived a "not yet" answer from that discussion, but I checked on the #imgone and Thibault confirmed the list of URLs was already submitted for archival. My very scientific sample testing confirms they were archived at some point.
- Now we only need to replace all those URL. Prefixing something like https://web.archive.org/web/20230810000000/ with a dumb regex would be enough, but a direct link to the most recent archival URL wouldn't hurt. Nemo (talk) 08:51, 13 August 2023 (UTC)
Copyright
Mention which copyright types of photos one is allowed to link to. Jidanni (talk) 10:03, 3 February 2026 (UTC)
fotoshi
Today I learned about https://fotoshi.com/ a mobile app to take and publish photos. All photos are default cc-by (just as mapillary if I remember correctly) and the project is somehow connected to openstreetmap, they host their own iD, they say they love OSM, they use it for their interactive map, they collect OSM-ids as metadata for their photos. I think it's worth creating them an own key, so mapper (or the project itself) can add fotoshi images to openstreetmap objects. Currently it works to use the photo id from the url to refference an image just as gqwOdHbA61G70S5OucGOWYqK identifies https://fotoshi.com/explore?photo=gqwOdHbA61G70S5OucGOWYqK it can be extracted from the url or requested over the api. There are also short links available for photos like https://fto.sh/i/oUeFPsrY for this one. So as I said, for me it seems to be worth an own key, should one write a proposal? -- Deus Figendi (talk) 19:43, 31 October 2026 (UTC)