Photos and storage

Photos are the part of the record people are most glad of a year later. A bed in April and the same bed in July says more about a season than any number does.

#Where a photo can go

Attach photos to a garden, an area, a plant, an activity, a harvest, a shed item or a step of a technique you write. Each finds its way onto the right timeline: a photo of a plant appears on that plant’s page and in the garden’s gallery; a photo attached to an activity appears with that entry.

You can pin a photo as the cover for a garden, an area or a plant. That is the image that represents it on Explore, in lists and on cards. Pinning a new one does not remove the old — it stays in the timeline.

#The timeline

A garden’s Photos page is everything in date order. Where a photo carries a date taken, that is the date used — so pictures taken on a walk round the garden last week and uploaded today land where they belong rather than all at the top.

Tapping one opens it full screen, and you can move through the timeline from there.

#A single bed over time

Every area has its own Photos page too, reached from the area, and it works the same way. It is not only the shots you took of the bed itself: it gathers what grew there, the work done to it and what was picked from it, so a bed you have never photographed on its own still has a record. Most people photograph plants far more often than they photograph an empty bed.

Photos that belong to a plant are managed on that plant — you can see them from the bed but you pin and delete them where they live. The ones you upload to the area are yours to pin and delete from its Photos page.

Adding a photo on the area’s edit form puts it in that gallery as well, so updating the picture of a bed no longer replaces the one that was there.

#Cropping and rotating

You can crop and rotate before you upload, in the browser, without a separate app. Photos taken sideways on a phone come out the right way up.

Large photos are resized in your browser before they are sent, which is why uploading a dozen pictures over a phone connection is quicker than it has any right to be.

#What counts against your space

Photo storage is one of the things that comes with a garden you pay for — the other is the assistant — so it is worth knowing what is being counted.

What is stored is an optimized copy, not the original off your camera. A photo that left your phone at 8 MB is stored much smaller than that, and the figure you see on your storage page is what is actually kept.

The storage page breaks your usage down by what the photos are attached to, and lets you delete individual ones. It is the right place to look if you are near your limit and wondering what is using it up.

A photo on a step of a technique counts against the author who wrote the technique, and it is shown wherever the technique is — to anyone who can read the technique, on Learn once it is approved.

Video is not supported.

How much space you get, and how a paid garden changes it, are on the pricing page.

#A note on what’s public

If a garden is public, its photos are public. The timeline, the covers, all of it. If a picture shows something you would rather strangers did not see — a house number, a face, the layout of your back gate — that is worth a thought before the garden goes on Explore.

Photos are checked automatically after upload, and anything that looks like it does not belong is held for review rather than published. People appearing in garden photos is expected and fine.