Adding photos to a report
How to attach a photo to your Mt. Rainier report, why you need a free account, which file types work, and how we strip location data from your pictures.
A photo makes a report better. It also makes the feed a lot prettier.
You'll need a free account
Photos are for signed-in users. On the web, anonymous visitors see a disabled "Add a photo" button with a prompt to create a free account. In the iOS app, you need a profile before you can add a photo. Everything else about reporting works without one. See anonymous vs. account.
Adding one in the iOS app
On the photo card you can Take Photo or Choose from Library straight away. (Take Photo is hidden if your device has no camera.) The app crops the picture automatically.
You may notice the photo starting to upload while you're still composing your report. That "early upload" only happens on Wi-Fi. On cellular, the photo is sent when you tap submit. Until you submit, the staged photo is private and not visible in the public feed. It's deleted automatically if it sits unused for 60 minutes.
What happens to your photo's metadata
Photos can carry hidden info, like where and when they were taken. We remove it:
- On our servers, always. Every report photo is re-encoded before it's stored, which drops the EXIF block, embedded GPS, and other hidden metadata. This applies to every upload path, including the iOS early upload. If a photo can't be cleaned, it's rejected rather than stored as is.
- In the iOS app, before upload. The app also strips EXIF and re-saves your photo as a plain JPEG before it leaves your phone.
Which file types work
JPEG and PNG, up to 10 MB. HEIC/HEIF photos are not accepted by our servers, and neither are WebP or other formats. The iOS app converts whatever you pick (including HEIC) to JPEG on your phone, so you won't notice. On the website, convert a HEIC photo to JPEG first (many phones can save or share as "Most Compatible" JPEG).
The photo itself is stored and shown to other people in the public feed. So don't submit anything you wouldn't want on a public feed.
Reporting a bad photo
Each report in the iOS app has actions to report content and block a user. Blocked users' content is hidden from you.
What the report options mean
The five visibility states you can report for Mt. Rainier, from Not Out to Out, and how to pick the right one.
How reports are processed
What happens after you hit submit, including how the map updates, when the overall status changes, and the limits that keep the data honest.