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We are delighted to announce the launch of another major new feature on plotaroute.com - photo sharing. This has been one of the most popular new feature requests from users of the site, so we are very pleased to be able to make this available.

You can upload photos for any routes that you've saved - just click the new "PHOTOS" option in the route planner when editing the route - either on your computer or your mobile device. You can also sort the photos in any order you like for a slideshow and add captions too.  And you can locate photos on the map if you wish, with a clickable camera icon.

Once photos have been uploaded they can be viewed together with the route map on the route listing page, which is easy to share. Here you can take advantage of the route player's fullscreeen option to view a fullscreen slideshow of all the photos.

Here's an example of a route with photos: Kilimanjaro Machame Route with photos.

Happy photo sharing!

Did this update just get pushed out this morning?  I believe it may have created a slight issue with how routes display.  Whenever I select a map to view it appears only on the right side of the screen.  I've attached a couple of screenshots of it in Internet Explorer but it also shows up the same way in Chrome. 

[IMAGE REMOVED DUE TO SIZE]

Thanks for flagging this up Daniel - much appreciated.  Yes, this was caused by the upgrade released this morning.  A fix has just been applied so it should hopefully be OK now.

John

Thank you so much! Everything looks great now. 

This is a great new feature.  

I've been plotting a new route this week so took my camera along.  I'm planning to use the pictures to help people follow the route (rather than see how pretty it is.)  Not all of my users will have a phone/tablet so will want to print out the route on paper.  Could an option to include photos be added to 'Print' (so people can choose whether or not to print photos)?

It would be good to be able to choose whether the photos are printed in line with the directions (so each one appears at the apprpriate point along the route) or all togehter on a separate page.

Thanks

Hi Martyn - glad you like this latest upgrade.  Thanks for the suggestion - that's a very good idea and probably an oversight on our part to be honest!  I'll see if this can be done soon.  

I'm not sure how easy it will be to link photos with directions though, as photos can currently only be linked to a location on the map rather than to a point on the route - this could get confusing for sections of the route that overlap (e.g. an out and back route).  We would probably have to provide a way of linking a photo to a given direction, which would be quite a bit more work - I'll have a think about this.  In the meanttime, you could add menaful captions to the photos and I'll ensure that these are printed alongside the photos.

John

Hi John, thanks for picking up on my posts so quickly.

I had not appreciated that photos are not linked to the route.  I thought everything was so your information is very useful.

I understand that adding a print faculity for photos could be much easier than changing the functionality to link them to the route. The former fix would be much apprectiated but I suggest that the latter is not overlooked in the longer run.  I noticed that one of the people who had posted requesting photos had done so precisely becasue they want to do the same as me, i.e., illustrate the directions... a picture being worth a thousand words.

The reverse of this is Map Labels and Symbols which, if I understand correctly, ARE linked to the route. However, I have dicovered some instances where I'd like to add these but NOT linked to the route.  For example, to indicate a pub that is near but not on the route or parking that is close to the start of a route.

Rather than all of these things being special cases, I wonder if there is scope to allow Photos, Map Labels and Symbols all to be added either to the route or off the route according to need.  If added to the route, they would appear with the directions.  If added off the route they would just appear on the map for information.

Best regards, Martyn

John, if you want a route to test the photo printing with, here is a route I've been working on:

https://www.plotaroute.com/route/365296

I've only added two photos so far because I'm reluctant to commit to 'No adds' until I can be sure that the photo feature will fulfill my purpose.

As you suggest, I have included photo captions that link to the direction points.

(PS When adding photo captions, I noticed that I was unable to edit the caption of a photo that I had uploaded, captioned and saved a day or two ago.  However, I could add a caption to the second photo and immediately go back and edit it.)

Thanks Martyn.  I can't seem to be able to reproduce the caption editing issue here - it works OK for me - can you have another go please and if it's still happening let me know how to recreate the problem?

Thanks,

John 

John,

I've tried the caption editing again and cannot reproduce the exact issue I noticed the other day. However, there does seem to be something not quite right and I suspect that it might be to do with the lack of a 'Cancel' option during caption editing.  

If I make a change to the caption of my first photo and decide I do not want to keep the change, the obvious thing to do is to click the cross (top-right.)  If I then go on to edit the caption on the second photo, my edit of the first caption seems to carry across to the second photo! One caption appears superimposed on the other with the second caption in gray and the first in white.  (I would include a screen shot but I can't understand how to do this.  There does not seem to be a 'browse' option to locate a file when I click 'Insert/edit image' and paste does not seem to add the contents of the clipboard.)

Martyn

Thanks Martyn - I'll get the caption cancellation fixed while sorting out the other things for photo location and printing.

John

I'm pleased to say that the suggestions and issues raised in this thread have now been addressed - see out latest news release for more information.

John

Is there an optimum size for photos?

Photos are resized to a maximum of 800 x 533, so using this size or multiples of it is best.

John