Trail Photo Uploads for OpenStreetMap: Solutions?

Help and support
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I’m writing a guide for outdoor enthusiasts in my region on how to contribute to OpenStreetMap (OSM).

In addition to uploading GPS traces, I want to encourage people to upload trail photos online. These photos can help identify trail conditions, similar to how Google Street View allows single 360 photos uploads or the premium Trail View feature in Komoot.

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Some people already upload their pictures to various online services, but images lose their GPS data during conversion and are usually mapped to some proprietary API.

Street-imagery mobile apps like Mapillary, Kartaview, and Mapilio require using their specific UI functions to record sequences, which might not appeal to hikers or OHV riders.

While it is possible to upload GPS-tagged images along with a GPX file using the Mapillary Desktop Uploader, this process can be complicated for non-tech users.

Outdoor enthusiasts may have many pictures on their phones with GPS coordinates and even direction data.

Ideally, there would be a mobile app that allows simply uploading these images which contain GPS coordinates to a service, which could then be integrated (with some effort) into the web-based editor iD.

Any advice, workarounds, or ideas?

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I usually recommend people add ‘good’ photos to Wikimedia Commons, and less-good ‘survey’ photos via StreetComplete’s notes feature (which allows uploading photos that I think are deleted sometime after the note is resolved).

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Look at Panoramax. It’s not yet a perfect fit for outdoors use cases, but it’s definitely promising

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It is promising. I am looking forward to the native mobile version and iD editor integration.

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Too bad both apps are not available on IOS :frowning:

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True, but at least for Commons I don’t really think the app adds all that much — just using the UploadWizard works pretty well on a small screen (although I must admit I usually don’t bother uploading while I’m out walking; it’s easier to wait till later because of needing to write titles, captions, etc. for the photos).

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It works, but it’s still not user-friendly. You have to go through a form with lots of questions and steps. Also, the platform isn’t designed for uploading millions of trail pictures.

Ideally, I would like the existing street imagery platforms to allow the upload of single photos through their native mobile app. Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be possible at the moment.

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I am working on it, though

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The native App is there : Beta-test appli iOS Panoramax | Framaforms.org

It.s a bêta version. A lot of features are missing (but are in the pipes)

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For StreetComplete?

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If you want a basic web upload, then there aren’t many options, Wikimedia being the one already mentioned.
Best option overall in my opinion is still Mapillary, as it has by far the best app-data stack and integration (iD, Osmand, etc). For Android, I’ve seen a standalone upload app that was developed by someone in the OSM BY community, don’t know if it still works.
I’ve been pleading with Mapillary to allow photo library upload for a while, but they obviously don’t want the hassle

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Do you remember the name of the application ? I guess this might be the best option at the moment.

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I think it was this Uploader To Mapillary - Apps on Google Play

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Panoramax actually has a web upload tool:

Mapillary is owned by Facebook and has made it notoriously difficult to get copies of your uploaded images alongside other forms of enshittification including making their app closed source once they took over OpenStreetView. For those reasons and more, I recommend Panoramax which although relatively new, has great funding, is rapidly improving, and is FOSS/Federated/Decentralised.

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It’s an golden oldie, but have you considered Flickr? It’s quite good with geotagged photos, and the free account allows for 1000 (public) photos. There are apps for Android and iOS.

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Thanks. I haven’t, because there’s no iD integration and it’s a must-have requirement.

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If iD integration now has become a must-have, isn’t the answer then simply to look at what services offer iD integration?

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Then Wikimedia Commons, StreetComplete and Panoramax also fall off.

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I’m also looking for a solution to this, I want to upload individual trail photos from ones I have already taken to a service that can easily be used on OSM. I tried the app you linked and it looks like you can’t do the authorization with Mapillary anymore.

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Yes, sadly one of the numerous api changes might have broken it. I’m not aware of an alternative, but it might be possible to persuade the author to open source the code