Take picture

[pyrog]

1. Simply for documenting a POI
2. Also to publish it on the web (Mapillary, Wikimedia Commons…) and set the appropriate tags (mapillary, wikimedia_commons, image…)

In the first case, pictures could be stored in the phone gallery according user preferences (SD card, phone memory).

[Zverik]

Yeah, I even mentioned the first case in my SotM 2021 talk. But this is quite a complex thing to do. Added to the roadmap, but with no target date :)

[pyrog]

I have several ideas, already worked on how to publish images to MediaWiki for osmhydrant (Wikimedia Commons and probably OSM Wiki).

[JLZIMMERMANN]

No OSMhydrants published in Flickr and were uploaded in wikimedia.
I think Flickr would be a good idea to store pictures if anyone has an acount.
Afterward we would push the tag in Flickr osm:node=* like here.

[Binnette]

Note that StreetComplete allows users to add a picture on a note. Ex:

• https://www.openstreetmap.org/note/3176448
• https://westnordost.de/p/99124.jpg

May be @Zverik can host a similar solution on https://ilya.zverev.info ?

Server side @westnordost uses a PHP application: https://github.com/streetcomplete/sc-photo-service
And client side, he implements the upload in this class: StreetCompleteImageUploader

Have a nice day

[JLZIMMERMANN]

The problem is that the pictures taken in Streetcomplete are photo-notes and are note taken to be linked with the OSM objetct.

[pyrog]

The problems with StreetComplete are:

• pictures are reduced (so it's difficult or impossible to read something i.e. a house number)
• pictures are automatically deleted after a while when notes are closed.

[pyrog]

When I collaborate with Robert Koch to OsmHydrant few years ago, previous Flickr OsmHydrant pictures were uploaded to Wikimedia Commons, and since, the web app upload new pictures directly to Commons.
AFAIK, this is still the case.

But anyway, an ideal app should be agnostic : take a picture and publish it to the user preferred repository (Flickr, Wikimedia Commons, Mapillary, a GitHub repo, a "Géo Commun"…).

If applicable, metadata in the repo could be set (i.e. date, lat, lon, ±osm id, ±wikidata item…) and an osm tag too (mapillary, wikimedia_commons, image)

[JLZIMMERMANN]

Have you checked Commons (Android) app ? It gives option to push pictures in wikimedia servers. In my idea if we are able to create OSM categories we would upload located pictures that would be connected with OSM pictures like OSMhydrant did at the end.

[j9d3it]

Imgur has an anonymous image upload API. This could work as well.

[mnalis]

• Note that for Wikimedia Commons, there is a limit what should be uploaded. See linked issues in Choose which features are notable enough Discostu36/OSM-Photos#31 for discussion. Also, Wikimedia Commons is big on metadata (not picture only).

  I'd absolutely love to be able to publish pictures there, but it should not be the only possibility, as many situations produce pictures needed for mapping which are not adequate to publish there.

[RayBB]

Hello, I recently started using every door and quite love it.
This is kind of a separate feature request, more related to the comment here but close enough that I didn't wanna create a new issue just yet.

Basically, I think it would be nice to have an option to upload photos to wikimedia or some other permanent storage to add images of POI.

However, I think that the ability to upload temporary(ish) images would be a huge plus towards one of the major goals of this project: to improve POI data for OSM.

I think it's really a matter of workflow.
From what I've seen of the talk about every door, and read in osm communities:

• Some people really like to walk slowly and type in information and update things while they are out in the field.
• Some people really like to go gather data in the field and enter it later.

I fall more into the 2nd camp. For example, I am very happy to take a photo of the sign on a door that lists the hours/phone number/website/address/etc and upload that so the info can be added to OSM later. I'm not so willing to try to type in the phone number and website manually, especially when connection is spotty or it's not nice weather. As such, part of the workflow I've done is take the photo with StreetComplete and add the data later (and occasionally some kind soul gets to the note and does it for me).

All this is to say, I think it would be great if every door had a way to let you upload photos for the purpose of using them to update POI later.

Thanks to everyone for the hard work involved :)

[j9d3it]

Imgur has an anonymous image upload API. This could work as well.

Update!!

Imgur will remove anonymously-uploaded images that have not been accessed.

[Zverik]

So I'm warming up to the idea of taking photos with the app for notes. The latest version already has two types of notes and a dedicated server, so no reason not to add a third one, for photos. They can be stored for half a year with an option of exporting them in bulk to re-upload to e.g. wikimedia commons.

[tordans]

I see the appeal to add a custom image feature to every door. I still have hopes that at some point we will build a solution that works for OSM general or at least for alle editors(*). Until then, a few more links

• Upload pictures to Panoramax instead of Imgur pietervdvn/MapComplete#1451 holds information on how MapComplete plant so handle user image uploads in the future. Those images are attached to the OSM object, though, not OSM Notes.
• [FR] Nudge to add a free license to uploaded photographs. streetcomplete/StreetComplete#5489 (comment) is a good summary on the status of this feature in StreetComplete and has a few links on what was tried on the OSM website / operations side of things.

---

(*) There was some activity on micro grants a short while ago, so maybe those will come again and maybe this is something to build in such a project?

[tordans]

Update on …

• Upload pictures to Panoramax/Geovisio instead of Imgur pietervdvn/MapComplete#1451 holds information on how MapComplete plant so handle user image uploads in the future. Those images are attached to the OSM object, though, not OSM Notes.

openstreetmap/iD#9941 (comment) suggests there will be some progress on the Panoramax side of things if the funding does happen.

[Coehill]

Mapcomplete now has Panoramax integration
pietervdvn/MapComplete#1451 (comment)

[tordans]

In bryceco/GoMap#822 I asked how this MapComplete feature could be shared with GoMap but it sounds like this is not planned.