How Viewpoint handles your photos

Capturing and storing photos needs Pro (a one-time purchase) or Max (a subscription). On Free, Locations and photos already on your phone stay readable, and adding to them needs Pro.

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 as a compressed 1920px copy, not as the original. With Max that same compressed copy is also stored on our servers so it syncs across your devices. It is a copy for scouting and sync, not a backup of your original photos; on Free and Pro nothing leaves your device for our servers and there is no Viewpoint account — on iPhone and iPad your photos sync across your devices through your own iCloud instead. On Android, Free and Pro keep photos off our servers the same way — though Android’s own Auto Backup may copy them to your Google Drive unless you turn it off in Android Settings → Google → Backup; see the privacy policy for the full picture. This page explains the limits we apply, why they exist, and what to do when you hit them.

Photos per Location

You can attach up to 10 photos to each Location — 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:

1. The app stays responsive. A Location 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.
2. 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 Location, scaled across many Locations), 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 Location, 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.”

Viewpoint keeps only the compressed copy. It never stores your full-resolution original, on your device or on our servers, so it is not a backup of your originals. Where the original lives depends on how the photo got into Viewpoint:

• Photos you import from your library: the original is still in your phone’s photo library (iOS Photos or your Android gallery); Viewpoint doesn’t touch it and sits alongside it.
• Photos you take with Viewpoint’s own camera: the original is not kept unless you turn on Save captures to Photos in Settings. It is off by default on iPhone, iPad and Android. With it on, each capture is also saved to your photo library; with it off, the compressed copy is the only one that exists. If your originals matter, turn it on before you shoot, or shoot with your camera app and import.

Open the Location in the app to see your scout-quality preview; open your photo library for any original you saved.

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 Location as “keep at original quality” — for Locations 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 (Locations, maps, plans, watches: all uncapped).
• Data & transparency — what we do with the rest of your data.