High Resolution Photos (on non-cellphone camera tradeoffs)

Hello all,

This is my first post on LGConnect. I became a local guide early last year (in 2022), and have been having fun updating ever since. Updating Google Maps users to find cool places to visit, tourists or locals, is a great hobby and past time of mine. As I’ve started to get more ‘serious’ about my uploads, increasing views and points, and earning achievements, I’ve begun to seek out answers on the LGConnect forum and on Reddit’s r/localguides. Both have been helpful, LGConnect more.

I was wondering if anyone has noticed any relationship between the quality or resolution of photo being uploaded having any difference on the views they’ve received? Not quality in the sense of the composure of the photo itself (i.e. well-lit, framed well, no distractions in view, etc.), but rather the quality in the size and megapixels of the photo and the resolution the photo has. In short, does higher resolution = more views? Does Lower resolution = lower views? Is there a point at which it doesn’t matter?

There is no doubt that cellphone cameras have improved vastly over the last five years, but most still cannot compete with a high quality DSLR or Mirrorless camera, with a dedicated lens and sensor. Is it worth it to take pictures on a stand alone camera with a lens to increase picture resolution? Or is a photo taken on an iPhone 14 Pro Max or Pixel 7 Pro going to be just as good?

Does Google Maps even display photos in super high resolution, if available? Or is there a maximum resolution displayed?

I’m interested to hear any feedback you may have.

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hello, first of all, welcome to the forum. I hope you will be with us with more good articles. @MortenCopenhagen maybe help you.very good in technical matters​:smiling_face: :facepunch:t2:

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Hi @Skeeter

Highres photos are compressed and not shown in full res on Google Maps.

From observations I believe that there is a max pixel width that all images are reduced to. This can be seen when very wide panorama images are uploaded. They loose so much resolution that they are not worth looking at.

Keep in mind most Maps images are shown on small screen devices, so highres is hardly needed.

Other qualities determine the number of views. Helpfulness rather than resolution.

Thanks for the tag, @Gezendunyali

Cheers

Morten

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Thank you @MortenCopenhagen and @Gezendunyali for the prompt replies.

I found an older related post about the compression of files, specifically panorama photos, uploaded to Google Maps.

On the Photo Guidelines page I found some relevant material on recommended photo size, pasted below.

Photo guidelines

Your photos look best on Google if they meet the following standards:

  • Format: JPG or PNG.
  • Size: Between 10 KB and 5 MB.
  • Recommended resolution: 720 px tall, 720 px wide.
  • Minimum resolution: 250 px tall, 250 px wide.
  • Quality: The photo should be in focus and well lit, and have no significant alterations or excessive use of filters. In other words, the image should represent reality.

The recommended resolution size is quite small, but I guess it is what it is. Im wondering if photos uploaded at higher resolution above 750px but just below 5MB would retain higher resolution or if they’d be compressed to a smaller size during upload?

My brain is telling me:

higher res photo = better = (composition equal) more views

Im taking pictures on an iPhone 14 Pro Max. My photos are being taken at 12MP and are 3 to 4.9 MB per photo at 3024 x 4032px.
After uploading it seems they have been compressed some, although I don’t know that for sure as I’m just zooming in on my Google Maps photos and they don’t seem to have the same resolution as my photos app on my phone. I have the capability on my phone to take 48MP photos, although they are massive in size (around 150MB per photo.) I would love to get this level of detail in my photos, if possible. I understand a limit has to be placed on file size at some point because if we all were uploading thousands of photos that size, we’d be uploading Petabytes of photos quickly.

I’d love to hear thoughts, complaints, or recommendations (if there are any) on compressed files. My goal is simply to update the community with the best quality photos I can.

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Hi @Skeeter

You can make some tests to figure this out more precisely.

Upload a few images in high and different resolutions if you have not already done so.

Use a Desktop. You may need to use another account than your own. Find the first image. Pretend you want to flag the image. This will bring up a new page on which the image is shown in the highest resolution available on Google Maps. Download this image by right click and Save image.

Then you can compare the widths, heights and file sizes.

Please share your results.

Cheers

Morten

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Hi @Skeeter , I see there is an ongoing conversation with our master in selecting appropriate photos to publish in Maps, mostly focused on Storefront. I think you should read his ongoing series of posts.

As your question is mostly focused on Views, we need to consider a few things:

  • Google Maps has been designed to be a useful tool, to be obviously used mostly on mobile. From one side it means “small screen” and from the other it means “use your phone to add contents”. Sometimes, depending of the subject, I prefer to use the camera instead of the phone, but most of my photos uploaded in maps are taken from mobile
  • There is not a direct relationship between “size” of the photo and “quality” of the photo, and an high number of pixel doesn’t necessarily means “Good Quality”. What is important for Maps is first of all is the photo is useful, or relevant, for the users and for the business. Google base this on his experience about what the people search and watch with his search engine. A good photo is a photo that clearly represent the business, in focus, with a relevant subject and a good precision and sharpness. So the most important tool for a good photo is the person who takes the photo.
  • View are obviously proportional of the place (type of business) and area. I live in a small village in a province where the total amount of inhabitants is less than 900,000, so I would never expect millions of views on my photos.
  • Avoid redundancy and duplicates will help you to raise your average of views/photos. Select your best photos and upload only the selected ones. This will not only improve the views, but will also keep your account safe, because redundancy and duplicates are forbidden by the rules. Here below a classic example of what should be avoided:

  • Learn by your experience: what kind of photos receive more views. What kind of photos is featured?

Have a fun

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Thank you @ErmesT and also @MortenCopenhagen for the replies.

Morten,

I’ll take your advice and run some pseudo-A/B testing on files larger than / equal to the recommended pixels and see if those are garnering more views than the recommended size. I’ll run these for a while (month or two) and see if there is any difference in views, trying to keep composition as similar as possible.

I’m really enjoying your series on Storefront Photography and will definitely be implementing some of these suggestions in my future photos and in my test.

I’m going to particularly be using this one on Cropping Photos as I see this one to be the most relevant to uploading photos that will attract more views and fall within the criteria of my experiment on photo resolution and size.

Ermes,

Thank you for the honest review. I’ll reflect on some of my previous uploads and remove duplicated photos and photos that add little value. Sometimes its hard to take an honest look at your own submissions to judge their quality. However, this is a critical step to determine the quality of one’s contributions. While it would give me more points to level up to LG 10, redundancy/duplicates is essentially photo-dumping, and is correctly seen as a cheap way to increase local guide levels/points/views.

I’ve started with removing over 40 photos that were low quality and were redundant photos, and will continue to do so in the future. At first, I thought this would be a major blow to my points and views. I was happy to see this was not the case. 40 photos was only 200 points (which in the grand scheme of things is not that many when you are past 10,000 points.) The views on these redundant photos were all less than 100 views as well (at most bringing my view count down 4,000, which again is not bringing down my total views that much as I’m averaging way more than that in a single days worth of views anyways.)

I appreciate the time you both took to reply to my questions. Best wishes.

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@Skeeter

Your proposed test to see if high res pics get more views will be difficult. Confounding factores can not be controlled, so I doubt you will reach a conclusion.

When I suggested a test it was just to help you determine the max resolution pics are stored in on the Google Maps image servers.

All the best

Morten

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Thanks for your feedback, @Skeeter

What I started to do long time ago was to try to “think like a Google Maps user” to understand if my contributions were really helpful.

It is not easy, and now I am very selective with my photos. I love to take photos of details, and this is not what Google Maps needs, so most of the time I have to make the hard choice not to post them.

But there is a moment in the life of every good Local Guide that change the way to contribute and points became less important. In that moment you will discover that contribute will become easier, and you will get more points. It took three years to me to reach L9, two years to move from 9 to 10, while in the last year I’ve got 50000 points, mostly received by edits and roads

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