How to Load Photos into a Story Map?

Question

ESRI encourages trying to make story maps.  So I thought I would try it with a personal geneology map of my family origins from Europe to America.    Maps loaded fine,  but, it only allows you to load photos that are totally open source.  What if you are targeting a select audience and you want to use your own photos and don't want them to be open source?  One of the methods listed is to use Google Picasa, which no longer exists.  The replacement, Google Photos didn't work.  Any ideas?  Am I correct that the only way to load personal photos into a story map is by having an Enterprise License? Can't afford one of those at this point.

oevans_storymaps · Accepted Answer

Hi John,

Sorry you are having trouble adding images to your story.

Picasa does still exist so it does work today, but as you've heard Google is shutting Picasa down in favor of Google Photos, so if you are making a story that you want to be up for a long time that's not the best option.

You should be able to use images in Google Photos, but you can't typically copy the URL from the address bar. Just right click the image, copy that image URL, and paste that in using the URL option for adding images. You'll also need to make sure your images are shared publicly.

If you have access to another cloud file storage service like Dropbox you can store images for your story map there as well. Again, just make sure you've made the files public and copy the URL the service provides for your file.

In the future we will be adding the capability for you to upload images right in the app builder that can be stored in ArcGIS and share the security of your story map.

Owen