Problem adding photos to story map

[TrevorDoBell-Carlsson]

Hi, I'm trying to make my first story map and I'm having trouble with adding photos. The photos I want to add were all taken on iPhone, then emailed to a computer and saved. When I add the photos to the story map, they are huge, blurry, and completely unusable. I've tried saving them as different file types but it makes no difference. Are iPhone photos not suitable for use in story maps? 

I'm adding the photos directly from my computer--I'm not trying to use Flicker or Google. 

Thanks for the help. 

[OwenGeo]

Hi Trevor -- Sorry you are having a problem with getting your images into a story map. Can you please let us know which story map app you are using? They are listed here.

Also, could you share a few of the photos here so we can test them and perhaps make your app public and share a link here so we can see what's happening? If that's not possible, could you please take a few screenshots and post them here so we can see what you are seeing?

[TrevorDoBell-Carlsson]

Hello,

Thanks so much for your help. I felt kind of badly asking because I really do like story maps and haven’t had trouble making one before.

I’m using the story map cascade app. Attached are a few of the pictures I was trying to use. I suspect, after researching online a bit, that perhaps my iPhone pictures just aren’t of good enough quality to show full-screen on the cascade story map—but I couldn’t figure out any way to shrink them to make them work. The first photo in my story map was taken with a digital camera and it displays perfectly; all subsequent photos were taken on an iPhone. Attached are a few of the ones I intended to use.

https://www.arcgis.com/apps/Cascade/index.html?appid=6094412aa15a4ce09c40407e113e0942

Thank you again.

Trevor

[OwenGeo · Accepted solution]

Hi Trevor -- Thanks for sharing your images. Your assessment is correct; those images are not large enough to use as background images in a Cascade. If you inspect them you can see the largest one is only 640 pixels wide (and one is just 240 pixels wide). To use an image as a cover or immersive background image it should be about 2000 pixels wide.

You may be able to use those images in your story if you add them in-line to a narrative section and set the size to SMALL.

What model iPhone are you using to take photos? If you are using an iPhone 3G or later the photos should be at least 2000 pixels wide. Sometimes emailing photos will reduce their quality. If so, be sure to send the full quality images when you transfer them to the computer with which you are making your story map.

More information about recommended image sizes for all story map apps can be found in our FAQ. For example, here's information about image sizes/treatments in Cascade.