Media and photos

Media is the page of a guide that lists every photo stored in it: the photos you upload there, a thumbnail you upload on Name and price, every spot's photos and photos an AI agent added. You find it in the sidebar under The guide. This page also covers the other places where photos come in or get picked: a spot's photo row, Find photos, the thumbnail field and the image picker.

The photo list

Upload images at the top adds photos from your computer, one or several at once. While they upload, the row counts them down (Uploading 3...). Once the guide has a photo, three settings of the whole guide sit under it: Show credits, Show descriptions and Photo shape. See Defaults for spot photos. A guide without photos shows No images yet in place of the list, with its own Upload images button.

Each photo shows whole, in the shape you uploaded it, on a card that gives its place in the list (3/12):

A caption or credit saves when you leave its field, and the card says Saved. While a field holds a change you have not left yet, the guide bar asks you to save your changes before you publish, and Publish stays grey.

The list mixes the guide's own photos with the spots' photos, so you caption and credit everything in one place. The cards do not say which spot a photo belongs to. Only the guide's own photos can go on a sales page or become the thumbnail: see The image picker.

An arrow moves the photo one place. The guide's own photos and each spot's photos are numbered separately from the same start, so two photos often share a number; a move between them numbers the whole list again in its new order. Moving a spot's photo here can also change its place among that spot's photos. To order a spot's photos and choose its cover, use the spot's own photo row. The image picker offers the guide's own photos in the order of this list.

Defaults for spot photos

Three settings under the buttons say how the guide's spot photos show to buyers. Each one is a setting of the whole guide, saves the moment you change it and needs no publish. A spot can override each one for its own photos, in the Media section of its Advanced options: see Spots. A spot that sets nothing follows these.

A spot's own choice always wins over these. The example guide shows its settings and cannot change them.

Captions and alt text

The caption is a line about the photo. For now buyers do not see it: no photo shows its caption, neither under the photos of a sales page nor on a spot's page, in the app or in the studio's previews. The text stays saved with the photo, and it does one job:

• Alt text. It is the description screen readers speak in place of the photo, and the text a browser shows when the photo cannot load. Without a caption, the spot's or the guide's name stands in. A photo an AI agent uploads can carry alt text of its own, which the guide then uses instead.

Credits

The credit names who took the photo. Leave it empty for a photo you took yourself; for someone else's photo, write the photographer's name. Which photos a guide may use, and which licences ask for a credit, is on Photos and credits.

Show credits

Show credits, the first switch under the buttons, is a setting of the whole guide: it decides whether buyers see photo credits. It is on until you turn it off, and it saves the moment you flip it. A spot can set its own Credits to override it for that spot's photos: see Spots. About photo credits, the (i) beside it, sums it up: the switch shows each photo's credit in the guide and on its sales pages; some photo licences require the credit to be shown; if every photo is your own, hiding credits is fine and looks cleaner.

• On: buyers see each credit as Photo · Name, or Unsplash · Name for an Unsplash photo: on a spot's photos (in a chapter's reading view, in the spot's menu under Photo credits), on the photos of a chapter's intro, and under the photos of a sales page's hero and gallery. Every photo here shows its Photo credit field.
• Off: buyers see no photo credit, neither in the guide, on the web or in the app with its offline copy, nor on the guide's sales pages, the credits an AI agent wrote included. The credit fields fold away here. The credits themselves stay stored with their photos: turn the switch on again and every one shows as before.
• Always shown: a credit the photo's licence asks for. Photos from Unsplash and Wikimedia Commons (Find photos) and any photo an AI agent marked with an Unsplash, CC BY or CC BY-SA licence keep their credit for buyers even with the switch off. The (i) says so too.

The switch applies without a publish. The guide follows at once, and sales pages within 5 minutes. The studio's previews follow it too: the phone in the spot form, a chapter's intro preview and the sales page builder.

What the switch does not do:

• It does nothing to captions, and it deletes no credit.
• It does not stop an AI agent from writing credits while they are hidden, and no agent can flip it: only you can, signed in to the studio, never with an API key.
• The Photo credit fields of a chapter's intro stay in the chapter editor; only their display to buyers follows the switch.

On a guide approved for the Sceniq Store, turning credits off keeps the guide in the store, but Sceniq sees the change, as with other changes after approval.

Uploading photos

You add photos in four places:

• Upload images in Media adds them as the guide's own photos.
• A spot's photo row adds them to that spot: see Photos on a spot.
• Find photos on a spot's photo row brings in photos from Unsplash, Wikimedia Commons or your Instagram: see Find photos.
• Upload image in the thumbnail field adds one photo, which also joins Media: see The guide thumbnail.

Collection covers and chapter photos are uploaded in Collections. Your browser prepares them the same way (upright, scaled down, saved without metadata) but makes no small copy, and they stay with their collection instead of showing in Media.

What happens to an upload

Before anything leaves your computer, your browser prepares each photo:

1. It opens the photo and turns it upright, the way your camera recorded it.
2. It scales the photo down so that its longest side is at most 2048 pixels. A smaller photo keeps its size; nothing is enlarged.
3. It saves the photo again as a WebP file (a JPEG in Safari, which cannot write WebP). The new file carries none of the original's metadata, so the photo's GPS location and camera details never leave your computer.
4. It makes a small copy, 640 pixels on its longest side, for small tiles in the studio, the image picker, lists in the app and its offline downloads. If the small copy fails, the photo still uploads and the full size is used everywhere.

The photo is then stored with its width and height, so pages hold its shape while it loads, and it appears in the list.

The studio refuses:

• files over 100 MB, and photos over 80 megapixels;
• files your browser cannot open. HEIC photos, the format iPhones save by default, open in Safari only: in other browsers the upload says it could not read the file. Convert them to JPG, or upload from Safari.

A file that fails is listed in red with its name and the reason; the other files upload anyway. A file that uploads leaves no message: the photo showing up is the confirmation.

Photos an AI agent uploads through the Creator API (AI agents and API keys) get the same treatment on Sceniq's server: turned upright, scaled down to at most 2048 pixels on the longest side (never enlarged), saved as WebP without metadata, with the small copy. A JPEG or WebP that is already upright, within 2048 pixels and no larger than the new file would be stays as it is, minus its metadata.

Photos on a spot

Each spot's editor has a photo row under Photos: square tiles in their order, then two dashed tiles, Drop photos and Find photos.

On a saved spot, new photos upload as soon as you add them, and moves and deletes save at once: none of it waits for the spot's Save. A photo on its way up shows as a spinning tile.

On a spot you have not added yet, the photos wait in the row. You can still move them, and removing one just takes it out. They upload right after you add the spot. If some cannot be uploaded, the spot is added anyway and a note says how many to add again.

You edit the captions and credits of spot photos in Media.

A spot buyers see needs at least one photo before the guide can be published, so Photos carries the required mark. A spot whose photos are switched off with Show photos (under Visibility in the spot's Advanced options) needs none: buyers see it as a compact entry without images. The shape of a spot's photos, and whether their credits and descriptions show, are set in the spot's Media section under Advanced options: see Spots.

Find photos

Find photos, the second dashed tile on a spot's photo row, opens a search for photos of the place. A switch at the top picks where they come from:

Click photos to choose them, as many as you like and from more than one source. A chosen photo is ringed with a check mark; click it again to leave it out. Pointing at an Unsplash or Commons photo shows the photographer's name. A photo the spot holds already says In spot. Show more under a grid loads the next photos. An empty search asks you to type a place, and a search that finds nothing says so: try a wider word, like the valley or the region, or Wikimedia Commons' Near the pin.

Add photos (it counts them, like Add 3 photos) closes the dialog and adds the photos to the spot in the order you chose them, after its other photos. Clear selection unchooses them all. On a saved spot the photos come in at once, without waiting for the spot's save, each as a spinning tile until it is there. On a spot you have not added yet they wait in the row with your other photos and come in right after you add the spot. A photo that could not come in is named under the row with the reason, like Instagram photo: and Instagram's answer.

What each source's photos become:

• Unsplash: the photo stays on Unsplash and loads from there wherever buyers see it, as Unsplash's rules ask, and Unsplash counts the photo as downloaded. Its credit reads Unsplash · Name and links to the photographer's Unsplash page.
• Wikimedia Commons: a copy is stored in your guide like an upload, scaled to at most 2048 pixels. Its credit names the author and the licence, like Photo · Name, CC BY-SA 4.0, and links to the photo's Commons page. Only photos whose licence allows use in a paid guide with a credit are offered: public domain, CC0, CC BY and CC BY-SA.
• Instagram: stored like the photos of the Instagram import, with no credit: they are your own.

Unsplash and Commons photos keep their credit for buyers even when Show credits is off, because their licences ask for it (About these photos, the (i) beside the switch, says so). You can still edit the credit in Media; keep the photographer's name in it. Which photos a guide may use is on Photos and credits.

If Unsplash or Commons is busy, the grid says so in red: try again in a few minutes. Unsplash only shows once Sceniq has set it up.

The guide thumbnail

The thumbnail field on Name and price works with the same photos. Upload image, or a click on the empty frame that reads Add image, uploads one photo: it joins Media as one of the guide's own photos and becomes the Guide thumbnail at once. While it uploads, the frame reads Uploading. Choose image opens the image picker on the guide's own photos instead, and Remove thumbnail goes back to the default card image. Name and price has the details.

The image picker

The picker opens wherever the studio asks for one of the guide's photos: Choose image for the thumbnail, the image fields of the sales page builder, such as Hero carousel images, Gallery images, Collage image, Box image, Reviewer avatar and Checkout image, and an itinerary's cover, where it is titled Choose the cover. Its title names the field it fills.

For the thumbnail and the sales pages it offers the guide's own photos: the ones uploaded in Media or as the thumbnail, and photos an AI agent uploaded for a sales page. Spot photos are not offered there: they belong to the paid guide, and sales pages are public. To show a spot's photo on a sales page, upload it in Media as well, or make the page with Auto-generate text and images, which adds copies of the spot photos it uses to the guide's own photos (Sales pages). For an itinerary's cover it offers every photo of the guide, spot photos included, because only people who bought the guide see its itineraries (Itineraries).

The tiles show each photo's small copy, cropped to fit.

• One image (the thumbnail, a collage, a box image, a reviewer's avatar, the checkout image, an itinerary's cover): click a photo to use it, and the picker closes. In a sales page field or an itinerary cover that already has a photo, that photo carries a check mark, and clicking it again empties the field.
• Several images (the hero carousel and the gallery): click photos to add or remove them. Check marks show what is in, new photos join in the order you click, and you fine-tune the order in the form. The hero carousel takes up to 12 photos and the gallery up to 48; at the limit, a click adds nothing. Done closes the picker.

A guide without photos of its own shows No sales page images yet: upload some in Media first, then pick them. The itinerary cover picker of a guide without any photo shows No photos in this guide yet: add photos to a spot or in Media first. What a pick does on a sales page, and when it saves, is on Sales pages; an itinerary's cover saves with the itinerary.

Deleting a photo

Deleting removes a photo from the guide for good. Media asks first, in Delete this image?: Delete image deletes it, Keep image closes the dialog. A spot's photo row asks the same in Delete this photo?, with Delete photo and Keep photo. Both delete the same photo: a spot photo deleted in Media leaves its spot too.

What happens next:

• The studio drops the photo at once: from Media, from its spot and from the image picker. It cannot be undone.
• On a live guide, buyers keep seeing the photo until you publish your changes. The published guide keeps its files; they are deleted with the next publish that no longer shows the photo. Before a guide's first publish, the files go at once.
• A spot whose last photo you delete needs a new photo, or its photos switched off, before you can publish the guide.
• A sales page that shows the photo loses it at once, without a publish: its draft, its live page (within 5 minutes) and every translation. A slide of the hero or the gallery leaves; the collage, a pitch box's image, a review's photo or the buy form image is left empty. The page keeps saving and publishing without it.
• The guide thumbnail stays. A deleted photo that is the thumbnail keeps showing on the guide's card until you choose another one or remove it.
• An itinerary whose cover it was goes back to the photo of its first spot, for buyers once you publish.

On a live guide

Buyers read a live guide as it was at your last publish. New spot photos, their order, and the captions and credits of spot photos reach buyers when you publish your changes (Save, preview and publish). Sales pages read the guide's own photos as they are now: a caption or credit you change on one of those shows on a live sales page within 5 minutes. Show credits needs no publish either: see Credits.

The example guide

The example guide's Media shows its photos, and their credits while its credits are on, with nothing to upload, move, edit or delete. Show credits, Show descriptions and Photo shape show the example's settings and cannot be changed; the (i) beside each, such as About photo credits, still opens. Its spots show their photos the same way.