How Viewpoint handles your photos
Every photo you capture in Viewpoint — whether you press the shutter in-app or import from your phone’s library — is stored on your device. If you’ve signed in, a compressed copy is also stored on our servers so it syncs across your devices; as a guest your photos stay on your device only. This page explains the limits we apply, why they exist, and what to do when you hit them.
Photos per spot
You can attach up to 10 photos to each spot — the same for everyone today, whether you’re signed in or using the app as a guest (this one is a local cap, enforced on the device).
That’s enough for the typical thorough scout: multiple angles, a result shot, a planning reference, and a couple of variations. If you reach the limit, the app will tell you — delete an existing photo to make room for a new one.
Why a limit at all?
Two reasons:
- The app stays responsive. A spot with hundreds of photos would make the detail screen slow to open and the photo gallery laggy to scroll. Bounded counts keep the UI predictable.
- Storage costs are real. Viewpoint runs on a small backend with no advertising and no VC funding — you pay for it directly. We size our infrastructure for the typical scout (a few good shots per spot, scaled across many spots), not for the edge case of thousands of frames per location.
What about archiving every burst frame?
Right now: not the use case Viewpoint targets. If burst-mode archiving or print-quality master copies matter to your workflow, that’s roadmap territory — see the “What’s next” section below.
How big can a single photo be?
The app compresses every photo you save on your device, before uploading, to roughly 300–700 KB (1920px on the longest edge, high-quality JPEG). The compressed file is what’s stored on our servers and what other devices download when you sync.
The server will reject any single upload larger than 3 MB. This prevents a buggy or malicious client from filling our storage with oversized files. The cap is generous compared to the typical compressed payload — 6× headroom — but tight enough that abuse is bounded.
Why is the in-app size so small if my original is 15 MB?
For the scouting use case the app targets — recall the spot, plan the next visit, share the shot list — a 1920px preview is sharp on every phone display and most desktop monitors. The original 8–15 MB iPhone JPEG carries print-grade detail you don’t need to remember “this is where the sunset hits the rocks.”
If you need the original full-resolution file, iOS Photos already has it. Viewpoint doesn’t replace your camera roll; it sits alongside it. Open the spot in the app to see your scout-quality preview; open iOS Photos for the original.
What’s next
The compression policy above is the right default for v1. Two follow-ups are on the roadmap and will get their own announcement when they ship:
- Print-quality archives. A way to mark a small number of photos per spot as “keep at original quality” — for spots you intend to print or publish. This will lift both the per-photo size ceiling and the storage cost trade-off; expect it to be part of a paid tier.
- Higher photo caps. Today everyone has the same 10-photo limit. We may raise it later as a paid-plan capability.
If neither lands by the time you need it, the best lever is direct feedback — tell us what your workflow actually needs.
Related
- Account limits — the broader “what we cap and what we don’t” picture (spots, maps, plans, watches: all uncapped).
- Data & transparency — what we do with the rest of your data.