Panoramio Help

Sharing and community

Panoramio is about sharing photos and it's a community-driven site.

Information sharing and onward transfer

  • Users who view your photos homepage will see information about you including your photos, and your username.
  • If other users add you to their Favorites, those users will see a notification when you upload new photos to Panoramio.
  • Users may be able to see your photos through searches on Panoramio, Google, and through third party services that access publicly available information on the web.
  • Users may comment on your photos; these comments can be seen by anyone who visits your photos homepage.
  • Google may review the content of a photos homepage if a user complaint is received, or if we have reason to believe that the account is used in violation of the Terms of Service.

Your choices

  • You may change your username, and other Account information and settings by clicking the "Settings" link in the top right hand corner of a Panoramio webpage after you sign in.
  • You may also change your preferences for sharing and licensing your photos by clicking the "Settings" link. If you choose "All rights reserved" no one can make copies or use your photos without your explicit permission. If you choose "Some rights reserved" you keep the copyright to your photos, but you allow some uses of your photos without your explicit permission.
  • You may also change your preferences for sharing and licensing a particular photo by clicking the "change photo settings" link in that photo's page. The per-photo license will take precedence over the default license from the "Settings" page.

Choosing and removing favorites

You can use a Favorites list to keep track of favorite photos or favorite photographers. When you mark photos or photographers as favorites, links appear on your personal (Your Photos) page so you can easily return to them.

To add a photo to your Favorites list:

  • Click the star over the photo, or click Add to Favorites. The star changes to yellow.

To add a photographer to your Favorites:

  1. Display the photographer's Panoramio page. If you aren't already on that page, you can get there by finding and clicking one of the photographer's photos.
  2. Click the star next to the title above the photo, Photos by. If the photographer's name is buenavista, click the star next to Photos by buenavista.

On the Your photos page, the items you selected appear under Favorites. You'll receive an email when any of your favorite photographers add a new photo.

To remove a favorite:

  1. Display the page where you first marked the favorite, whether it's another user's personal page or an individual photo page.
  2. Click the yellow star that marks the favorite. The star will lose its yellow color.

To disable notifications about new photos from a favorite photographer, refer to Enabling and disabling email alerts.

Finding other people's photos

Panoramio doesn't yet have the ability to search by name. To find the photos of a particular Panoramio photographer:

  1. Find one photo by that photographer.
  2. Click the photographer's name to display his or her personal page.
  3. Add the photographer to your favorites.

Enabling and disabling email alerts

As a Panoramio user, you'll automatically receive a daily email when one of these events occurs:

  • Someone leaves a comment on one of your photos.
  • One of your favorite photographers adds a new photo.

You will receive only one email daily, with both types of information.

To disable emails, do one of the following:

  • Click the link at the end of the email.
  • Go to Settings, look under E-mail alerts, and deselect the options.

Contacting another user

Despite in Panoramio we encourage open communications, there are some situations where Private Messaging can be handy. You may need to ask permission to another user to use his photo in your magazine, you may want to discuss a non-Panoramio related topic with another user, you may want to ask details about a Panomeeting, etc.

To use, copy, print, or download a photo from Panoramio, you must get explicit permission from the photographer. To contact a photographer to ask for permission, you can use Private Messaging. The owner of the photo will receive an email and can contact you back. If you want the photographer to contact you directly via email feel free to add this information in the message as Panoramio does not disclose email addresses of its users.

Private messaging is only enabled from within Panoramio and only Panoramio users can send messages to other Panoramio users. The feature is enabled by default. In case you want to change this configuration:

  • Go to Settings, look under E-mail alerts and Private messages, and deselect the option
  • Click the link provided at the end of a Private message you received in your email inbox

Spam in Private Messaging is not tolerated. The spam policy for Private Messaging is the same as the spam policy in comments.

Suggesting a change to someone else's photo

To suggest a change to a photo, add a comment explaining the change that you suggest. The author will get an email with your comment.

Discussing Panoramio online

Panoramio community members exchange a lot of information in the Panoramio forum. The forum is a place where you can ask questions, share tips, report bugs, or make feature suggestions.

Identifying incorrect information or inappropriate photos

Here are some suggestions for helping to fix problems in Panoramio.

Problem What can you do?
Incorrect information in Google Earth or Google Maps, such as incorrect street, town, and so on Please see the help center for Google Earth or Google Maps.
Incorrect location for someone else's photo It may happen that while browsing photos from Panoramio in the Panoramio map or in Google Earth, you find a photo that is not well mapped. It could be that the Photographer position (the place the photographer took the photo) is not correct, the place associated to the photo is not the one that the photo is about, or the Indoor check-box is incorrectly selected. In most cases this is a mistake in the mapping process that can be corrected by suggesting a proper location, place, or indoorness attribute to the photographer.

To suggest a change in any of the location attributes you will need to:

  • Visit the photo page (e.g. http://www.panoramio.com/photo/1000)
  • Click on the Misplaced? Suggest new location link under the map
  • Select the appropriate value for the field you consider to be wrong, and click on Save position

After a suggestion has been sent the owner of the photo needs to Accept or Reject the suggestion for it to be effective. After 3 suggestions on the same photo, the owner of the photo can block the photo from receiving suggestions if he is convinced that the photo is correctly located. In this case the message Misplaced? Suggest new location is replaced by Position locked.

When a suggestion has been sent to the owner of the photo, no other suggestions can be made until the owner of the photo has accepted or rejected the suggestion. During this time the message Misplaced? Suggest new location is replaced by Position disputed.

If a user has a photo in Panoramio and he is inactive in the community, suggestions from active and trusted users will be automatically accepted. This is to avoid having photos wrongly positioned in the map forever without the owner taking action on it. The definition of an inactive user and an active and trusted user is decided by Panoramio based on the user's activity pattern.
An inappropriate or offensive photo Under Flag photo, click inappropriate or offensive. If a number of different users flag a photo, the Panoramio administrator will review the photo and take further action. You can flag a photo only once; repeated clicks are ignored.

Because thousands of Panoramio users participate in community moderation, inappropriate photos are quickly identified and removed.
An offensive photo title Check the Acceptance Policy for titles and comments. If the photo title is not acceptable, flag the photo as Inappropriate or offensive and the Panoramio administrator will review it.
Photos that are acceptable according to the Panoramio policy, but that you don't like Just upload your own great photos to Panoramio! If the good photos become more popular than the photos you don't like, they'll also be more visible.

Responding to the suggestions of other users

If another Panoramio member suggests that you change the location of one of your photos, you'll get an email. Follow the link in the email to Panoramio, where you can choose to move the photo to the suggested location or keep it where it is.

Until you respond to the suggestion:

  • Panoramio removes the photo from the Panoramio map.
  • Panoramio schedules the photo for removal from Google Earth on the next transfer date.
  • Panoramio removes the Suggest new location link from the photo. The link is available for use only once.
  • The message Position disputed appears under the photo.

When you accept or reject the suggestion:

  • Panoramio restores the photo to the Panoramio map.
  • Panoramio schedules the photo for restoration to Google Earth on the next transfer date.
  • The message Position disputed disappears from under the photo.
  • The message under the map is changed to Position locked.

Because information exchange with Google Earth does not happen instantly:

  • The photo might appear in Google Earth for a short time after it has been disputed and removed from the Panoramio map.
  • The photo might be restored to the Panoramio map before it reappears in Google Earth.

If you respond quickly, the photo might simply be removed from the Panoramio map for a short period of time.