Photos on your site

Attaching your own photographs

The plus button in the message box adds pictures — a logo, a photo of the van, a screenshot of something that has gone wrong. Four to a message, and the button greys out once you have four on. You can attach on any turn, not only the first.

They are saved into the site as part of that turn rather than the next one, so they appear in the file list while the reply is still being written, and the model looks at them while it works. If you would rather have your own photograph in the hero than one we made, that is the way to do it: attach it and say where it goes.

What the message box takes

Formats

PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF and SVG

Per message

Four pictures

File size

No practical limit — your browser shrinks each one before it is sent

Longest edge after that

1400 pixels

Refused

Anything still over about 1.8MB when it reaches us

Taken off before sending

The small remove control on each thumbnail

Note. Four is also the most pictures the model can look at in one turn, and everything shares that allowance — a screenshot of your preview sent with the message takes one of the places. All four are still saved into the site either way. It is the looking that is capped, not the keeping.

What happens to it on the way

The picture is shrunk in your own browser before it leaves the machine. A phone photograph is four thousand pixels across and several megabytes; no web page needs that, and sending it whole would cost you money on every turn afterwards. The longest edge comes down to 1400 pixels, which is more than a full-width hero needs on a good screen.

A PNG whose original file is under about 400KB is kept as a PNG, so a logo keeps its transparent background. Everything else is re-encoded as a JPEG. An animated GIF arrives as a single still frame. An SVG is passed through exactly as it is.

Then it is written into the site itself, as one of its own files, rather than parked on a photo host and linked to. That is why it survives the download and the live site with no address to expire and nothing to go missing a year from now.

One line describing what the picture shows is written at the same time, by looking at it, and kept with the site. That is what makes asking for the van photo work three turns later, when a filename would otherwise be the only thing left to go on. It costs you nothing.

The one it cannot look at

An SVG is the exception. It is saved, and it works on the site — it is the right format for a logo, and it stays sharp at any size. It is never sent to the model to look at, because the part that reads pictures cannot read that format.

Two things follow from that. It cannot take a colour from your SVG logo the way it would from a photograph, so name the colours in words instead. And the only description that file will ever carry is its own name, so call it something that says what it is before you attach it.

The photographs on a first draft

A first draft of a website or an app orders its own photographs. They are made for the description you typed rather than picked out of a library, which is the whole point of doing it that way — two businesses in the same trade should not end up wearing the same picture.

Two is the usual number. Four is the most it will ever order and it is meant to be rare. Each one is 5 credits, and that is a second charge sitting outside the figure printed under the reply, on its own line. It is the commonest reason a balance drops further than the receipt says, and the credits guide covers that arithmetic in full.

Nothing about it is automatic after the first draft. By the fifth turn the ask is usually to make a header stick to the top of the page, and commissioning two more photographs because somebody moved a menu would be money taken for a question nobody asked.

• What you typed is read for what is actually worth photographing.
• A short list of briefs comes back — two most often, four at the most — or none at all.
• Each brief is photographed and written into the site before the build starts.
• The build lays the real headline over them, which is what they were framed for.

Tip. A fuller description makes better photographs — the trade, the work and the register give the shoot something to point a camera at. Being brief is not what stops it, though. Three words is enough for a real shoot, and a short description on its own is never the reason none arrive. There is a separate page on writing that description.

Note. Two cases get no photographs and neither is a fault. A business with no physical existence — bookkeeping, something done entirely over the phone — has nothing to photograph, and ordering nothing is the honest answer. And a game or a tool is built from drawn shapes and type, which is what those want anyway. There is a third case and that one is ours: a description of two words or fewer is dropped before the shoot is even considered, and nothing on screen says so. Give it a short sentence rather than a couple of words.

A free first build gets no photographs

Your first build is free. The photography is not part of it, and this is the sentence that should have been on screen long before you got here.

The free plan carries no credits, and the shoot is charged separately from the build. So on a free first build the charge is refused, the photographs are skipped, and the build carries on and finishes. You get a whole site with no photographs in it.

What fills the gap is not stock photography. There is no stock library behind this any more — it was taken out on purpose, because a matched search result is exactly what made every site in a trade look like every other one. A site with no photographs is built from colour, drawn shapes and large type, and that is a real design rather than a hole.

The part that is genuinely our fault is the silence. You may see a line go past about working out what the business should be photographed doing, and then no photographs arrive and nothing says why. There is nothing you did wrong to go looking for.

1. If you want photographs, put credits on the account.
2. Ask for one at a time, naming what it should show — 5 credits each.
3. Or attach your own, which costs nothing beyond the turn itself.

Tip. Having any credits changes the answer. If there is a balance on the account when you take your free first build, the photographs are ordered and charged — up to 20 credits — even though the build itself is free. The free build covers the building.

Note. If you came in through one of the first-look mockups and pressed build on it, that build orders no photographs either. The picture in the mockup is filed into the site and used exactly as you saw it, which is the promise the mockup made.

What a commissioned photograph will never show

The briefs are written under a fixed set of rules, and two of them answer most of the questions people have about why the pictures look the way they do.

• No people. No faces, hands, arms or figures in the distance, and none of the ways they get in round the back either — a reflection in a window, a cast shadow, a mannequin, a portrait on a wall. Image models still put six fingers on a hand, and a trade site is mostly hands doing work, so it is a rule rather than a preference.
• No writing of any kind. No signage, no labels, no packaging, no handwriting — and no numbers, which quietly rules out gauges, dials, meters, clock faces, tape measures, price tags, keyboards, screens and number plates.
• Nothing whose exact identity would be a claim. Your page says our workshop and our stock, so a photograph of one particular van, breed or room would be stating which one, and we do not know which one. The material, the setting, the process and the aftermath are photographed instead, so the picture is honest on the first day, before you have supplied anything of your own.
• Nothing the code can already draw. Gradients, patterns, icons and flat colour are written into the site directly — sharper, weightless and free — so buying a fixed-size picture of one would be waste.
• Room for the words. Each one is framed with a quiet third for the headline to sit in, which is why they can look off-centre on their own and right once the type is on them.

And what the build is not allowed to do about it

The model that writes your site is held to a matching set of rules, and every one of them exists because it has gone wrong before.

• It may not use a picture address from anywhere else on the internet. One it half-remembers looks exactly like a real one and gives you a broken image on a live site. The single exception is an address already sitting in your own files, so a working site does not have its pictures stripped out from under it.
• It may not stand something in for a picture that was asked for. No grey box, no emoji in a circle, no gradient pretending to be a photograph.
• It may not quietly hand you a different picture from the one you meant. If it cannot tell which you are pointing at, it is told to name the candidates and ask — being handed the wrong one without being told looks identical to the file being wrong, and what you do next is pay for another photograph.
• It may not leave a picture you have already paid for sitting in the project doing nothing. On a turn that is building or deepening a page it either places the unused one or says in a line why it belongs nowhere.

When a picture is wrong

Say which picture and what is wrong with it, in your own words. What happens next depends on which of three different things you are actually asking for, and the product would rather ask than guess — the three are far enough apart that a wrong guess is expensive.

Ask for a picture that already exists to change, and two new ones are made and put in front of you to choose between. The message that asks names what the pair cost. Picking is free, and the turn after it puts the chosen one in exactly as you saw it and deletes the one you turned down.

Ask for a treatment instead — crop it tighter, darken it, make it smaller, move it left — and nothing is generated at all. That is code, and it costs no more than the turn.

1. Name the picture and the problem in one sentence.
2. If two options come back, press the one you want, or type its number.
3. If instead you are asked which of three things you meant, answer it — that question takes no credits.

What each of those costs

Changing a picture

Crop, move, darken, resize

Nothing beyond the turn

Two options to choose between

3 credits, named in the message that asks

Choosing one of them

Free — the other is deleted with your answer

One new photograph on a later turn

5 credits

A picture that does not come out

Refunded, and the chat says so

Note. A message that reads as asking for a picture is a judgement made on your behalf without a confirmation step. It does not have to use the word photograph — asking for more atmosphere at the top of a page can be enough. The credits guide says more about where that charge appears.

When no picture arrives, and it says so

From the second turn onwards, every way this can fail is spoken about in the chat rather than left as a change that quietly happened without the picture in it.

• It did not come out — the change was made without it, and you have not been charged for it.
• There are not enough credits — it names the figure, so you know what would cover it.
• Image generation is not switched on for this site — a fault on our side rather than a decision about your account.
• It ran out of time working out what to photograph — nothing was charged.

Note. None of that is said on a first draft. If two of four photographs fail there, the difference is refunded quietly and the site is built with the two that arrived. The refund is real and automatic; the silence is ours.

Removing a picture, or putting it back

There is no picture manager and no delete button anywhere in the editor. Before you send a message and after you send it are two different situations, and only the first one has a control.

Before: each thumbnail on the message box carries a small remove control. Take a picture off there and it never reaches the site at all.

After: ask. Taking the photo out of the second section is an ordinary change on an ordinary turn. There is no screen that deletes a file from your site, so the sentence is the only route, and it does work.

Or go back. The version list in the editor holds what the site looked like before each change, so a turn that added a picture you did not want is one press to undo rather than a conversation to unpick.

• Uploading the same file twice does not replace the first copy. It is saved beside it and both stay.
• A new commissioned picture is always a new file. The old one is never written over, deliberately — a file whose contents change under the same name is exactly how a browser ends up showing you the old picture.
• So a site accumulates pictures that nothing uses. They cost nothing to keep and they are not a fault.
• Taking a picture off a page and deleting the file are two different jobs. Say which one you want.

Note. Pictures made in the image studio are a separate thing again. Those belong to your account rather than to one site, and the Images pane beside Preview and Code lists them for every site you build. Pressing one attaches it to the chat and stops there — where it goes on the page is still a sentence you write.

Common questions

Can I use my own photographs instead of the ones it makes?

Yes. Attach them with the plus button in the message box, four to a message, on any turn, and say where each one goes. They are saved into the site as part of that turn.

Why has my site got no photographs at all?

Most often because it was a free first build. The free build covers the building and not the photography, so the shoot is skipped and the site is designed from colour, shapes and type instead. A business with nothing physical to photograph, and a game or a tool, also get none.

Why is there nobody in any of the photographs?

That is deliberate. Image models still get hands and faces wrong, and a trade site is mostly hands doing work, so people are ruled out of every brief along with reflections, shadows and figures in the distance. What gets photographed is the kit, the material, the hour and the aftermath.

What does a photograph cost?

Five credits each, charged on its own line rather than inside the figure shown under the reply. A first draft orders up to four. Two options to choose between are 3 credits for the pair, and the message that offers them says so.

Can I delete a picture I uploaded by mistake?

Before you send the message, yes — take it off the thumbnail. After that there is no button for it. Ask for the file to be removed, or restore an earlier version from the version list.

Are my pictures uploaded to a photo host somewhere?

No. Each one is written into the site's own files, which is why it survives the download and the live site with no link that can expire and nothing to go missing later.