For our parkour group, we have a list of spots with custom pictures of the spots, embedded right into google maps, so you don’t have to click on any other website. This is quite cool and convenient. Is there any way to move that list (manually is ok) to OSM? E.g. in a city guides functionality, which I have some memory of, but don’t know where it comes from.
As mappers we can link OSM objects to images, but the images themselves must be hosted elsewhere because OSM is not an image hosting service. You can upload the images of your parkour landmarks to wikimedia commons, flickr, or really any image hosting service, then update the tags for the POIs in OSM.
As for saving the POIs, most apps that use OSM have favorites or bookmarks, for example, I know OsmAnd does, and I’d bet Organic Maps does, too. I know OsmAnd also has a way of displaying the images linked to a POI, so what you’d do is bookmark your parkour landmarks in an app like OsmAnd, then you should be good to go.
It’s a good idea to create a more decentralized solution to share your parkour spots.
Unfortunately osm.org does not support custom POI lists.
The german OSM community is hosting a Umap service, where you could create a custom POI map. (https://umap.openstreetmap.de/en/)
The map can then be shared and the POIs can be downloaded as gpx, kml or similar file. This file can then be imported into any Map Apps.
For the photos… If you get the permission to put these under a Creative Commons License, then you can upload them to Wikimedia. Then put the link into the description of the POIs in the Umap
OSM is database, not a website and it does not store pictures, only links to them. 1
The most well supported way would be to upload the images to wikimedia commons, create a category for each spot there, and than add the category name to the
wikimedia_commonstag on the element in osm.- Tag documentation: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:wikimedia_commons
- General info on Wikimedia Commons connection: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Commons
Renderer support:
- OsmAnd can display these images, in the section “Online photos” in the detailed view of an element
- Organic Maps adds a Wikimedia Commons button, which opens the category in the webbrowser
- On openstreetmap.org these links are clickable.
- Wiki lists some more renderers supporting this tag: https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:wikimedia_commons#Support
Another common tag for this is the
imagetag, you can just link there a single image. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:imageMapillary is a google streetview alternative owned by Meta/Facebook. It has it’s own tag and you can link there images uploaded to mapillary. Note: this platform is not fully GDPR compliant, and owned by a terrible company, so I personally don’t recommend contributing there, just it’s a common option. https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Key:mapillary
1: Except those strange guys who store base64 encoded images in the
imagetag, taginfo link, but it should be only really low resolution as there is an 255 character limit for values. I haven’t found a renderer which could display this.
