Photos & attachments

Tie photos and documents to features, browse them in a gallery, and sync them to the cloud.

DropMaps can attach real-world media — photos and documents — to individual features, so a site record, asset or observation carries its evidence with it.

Drop in geotagged photos

Drag JPEG or HEIC photos straight onto the map. Each photo with a GPS location in its EXIF metadata becomes a point where it was taken, with the photo attached. Photos dropped together land in one Photos layer, and the map zooms to them. Each point also records the photo’s time, direction, altitude and camera when the metadata has them. Photos without a location are skipped (the message says how many). If the map already has a photo layer, you can add the new photos to it or start a new layer.

Attach media to a feature

Click a feature and use the camera tile in its popup to add photos. Or, in the attribute table, use the feature’s attachment cell: Add photos (or the photo icon, showing a count when media is present). You can attach:

• Photos — shown in a built-in gallery with a full-screen lightbox.
• Documents — PDF, Word, Excel, text and more, per feature.

See attachments on the map

When a feature has photos, they appear in its popup as a gallery (configure popups in Styling layers). Click through to the lightbox.

Imported attachments

DropMaps reads media references that come in with your data — from KMZ, Avenza PDF-Maps, ArcGIS exports and Google Earth files. When importing an ArcGIS Feature Layer from a URL you choose whether to Link attachments (load them on view, staying online), Download them (copy in for offline use), or Skip them.

Where attachments live

By default everything is stored locally in your browser — nothing is uploaded unless you choose to sync. Photo cloud sync works on every plan: your feature photos back up to your account (metered against your storage), so they’re available on your other devices and in shared maps. Photos are the fastest way to fill a quota, so the free 100 MB won’t hold many — that’s what Pro’s 5 GB is for. See how much space photos take in Storage.

Photos added on another device stream from the cloud when you view them. To have them with no connection, select Keep photos offline on the map’s card in your Maps list, or Keep offline in Map settings ▸ Offline. See Working offline.

Next steps

• The attribute table — where you attach and manage media.
• Maps & cloud sync — back up photos to the cloud.
• Sharing & the viewer — publish a map with its photos.