Photos and credits

Which photos a guide may use, how credits and licences work, and what Sceniq does to every file you upload. How to add, order and caption photos in the studio is on Media and photos.

Which photos you may use

Use your own photos where you can: the photos you shot on location sell a guide best. For a place you have no good photo of, a spot's Find photos searches Unsplash and Wikimedia Commons and only offers photos under the licences below, with their credit filled in.

Under the creator agreement you own, or hold a licence for, every photo in your guide, and you promise that its credits are accurate. A photo someone else took is in your guide only under a licence: the photographer's permission, or a licence such as those below.

Sceniq's authoring rules, the rules it gives AI agents, go further for photos that are not the creator's own: each carries a credit with the photographer's name, and only these licences allow use in a paid guide:

• CC0 and public domain;
• CC BY and CC BY-SA, with the attribution they require;
• the Unsplash License (not Unsplash+);
• a tourism board's media library, with written permission that you hold.

Credits

A credit is the photographer's name. The studio's credit fields are for someone else's shot: leave them empty for your own photography. Where a photo can carry a credit:

• Spot photos and the photos in Media: on the Media page, every photo of the guide, spot photos included, shows its credit field while the guide's Show credits is on. A credit saves when you leave the field.
• A chapter's intro: the Side photo of a Text section has a Photo credit field, and so does each photo on Collection cards.
• No credit field: the Cover of a chapter or collection, the Author photo on a chapter's cover, and your Profile picture. A photo that needs a credit belongs in a place with a field.

Whether buyers see credits is one setting for the whole guide: Show credits on the Media page, on until you turn it off. While it is on, buyers see a credit as Photo · Name (a credit from Unsplash reads Unsplash · Name): under the photos of a sales page's hero and gallery, on a spot's photo or in the spot's Photo credits list inside the guide, and as a small pill on a chapter intro's photos. A credit with a link to the photographer's page, as Find photos sets for Unsplash and Commons photos, opens that page when tapped. Turned off, buyers see no credit anywhere in the guide or on its sales pages, except the credits a photo's licence asks for: a photo with an Unsplash, CC BY or CC BY-SA licence keeps its credit. The switch needs no publish, and only you can flip it, signed in to the studio, never an AI agent.

Hiding credits only hides them. The credits stay stored with their photos and show again when you turn the switch back on, and they must stay accurate either way, as you promise in the creator agreement. Some photo licences require the credit to be shown, as the note beside the switch says (About photo credits): with such a photo in the guide, leave credits on. If every photo is your own, hiding them is fine.

A credit is stored with the photo in Sceniq, not inside the file, so the metadata removal below never touches it. It also means a name your camera or editing app wrote into the file is not carried over: type it in.

Where your photos appear

• Photos on spots and chapters are part of the paid guide. Only buyers see them.
• A guide goes live only when every spot has at least one photo, unless the spot's Show photos switch is off: then buyers see a compact entry without images.
• Photos uploaded on the Media page, or as the guide thumbnail on Name and price, are the guide's public photos: the ones its sales pages and its card can show. A sales page cannot show a spot or chapter photo.
• The creator agreement lets Sceniq host, show and excerpt your guide, photos included, to run the platform: to serve the guide to buyers, render your sales pages, show teasers in the store and in search, and market your guide.

What happens to every upload

Before a photo leaves your computer or phone, the studio prepares it in your browser:

The metadata goes so that a photo of a hidden spot never gives away where it was taken.

Chapter covers, chapter intro photos and your profile picture go through the same steps, without the thumbnail; the profile picture is kept smaller. Safari reads HEIC photos; other browsers cannot, and the studio asks you to convert such a file to JPG and upload it again.

Photos from an AI agent

An AI agent you connect with an API key (AI agents and API keys) uploads photos through the Creator API, which takes JPEG, PNG and WebP files up to its own size limits. Sceniq's server then prepares them much as the studio does: rotation applied, the long side at most 2048 px, WebP, all metadata removed, and the thumbnail for guide photos. The differences:

• The capture date is read from the file before the metadata goes and kept with the photo, for the guide's checks. Buyers do not see it.
• A JPEG or WebP that is already small and upright can be kept as sent, with its metadata removed.
• If the server cannot prepare a photo, it stores the file as sent with its metadata removed: not resized, not converted to WebP and without the thumbnail.

Sceniq's rules for agents: an agent uses your own photo files, asks who took each one and adds the credit, and never generates images. It takes photos from the web, stock sites or social media only when you ask for a guide built from licensed photos, and then only under the licences above, each with its credit, licence and source page.

When someone claims a photo

If Sceniq receives a notice that a photo, or anything else in your guide, infringes someone's rights, the creator agreement sets out what happens: see Rights notices and takedowns.