Vertically oriented photos

[Laila120]

Hi everyone.  I painstakingly took photos of my place, but I'm finding they don't always look the way I expected them to once uploaded into my listing.  For instance, sometimes it looks like the entire photo is not shown.  And what about vertically (portrait) oriented photos?  Is there a photo editor within Airbnb that will allow me to crop or anti-crop, meaning zoom out to show my whole photo?

Thanks a million!

[Patricia2526]

Hi @Laila120 

If you’re using your phone to take photos, make sure to shoot in landscape orientation so the images look better on the Airbnb platform. If you’re using an iPhone, switch to the 0.5 wide-angle lens to capture more of the room. It’s also best to take photos during daytime open all the curtains and blinds to let in as much natural light as possible. This helps make your space look brighter, cleaner, and more inviting to potential guests.

[Laila120]

Hi! Thank you for responding! I realized later that its only the very first photo that can't be vertical. Other shots can be. Which is unfortunate because I had a special shot to put first that was vertical, but I just made it my 2nd shot.  🫤 oh well.  Thank you.  

Happy hosting,  Laila

[Alex]

Hi @Laila120!

I'm so happy that you got the help you needed. Did you also check @Joan2709's link? That will give you more context. Let us know when you've had a chance to review it.

Best,

Alex

[Laila120]

Hi Alex,

I don't need help on how to take photos, I was really looking for a work around to have a vertically oriented photo be my main, first photo. I don't think they're is a way to make that happen. 

Thanks,  Laila

[Joan2709]

@Laila120 

Sorry if you felt I implied you didn't know how to take photos 😊

The Help Article discusses issues related to photos in general  including landscape vs vertical, preferred size and other tips.

In order for a vertical photo to appear properly as a cover, you would have to crop it to fit a 3:2 ratio or a 4:3 ratio as Airbnb will try to force it to display in a landscape format, so yes, you can use a vertical photo as a cover photo. However, you would have to edit it (crop it top/bottom) so that it appears correctly to a guest. It is helpful to use View mode to see how it appears to guests after you crop the photo in both desktop and App formats. Sometimes cropping won't work depending on the dimensions of the original vertical photo. This is why Airbnb suggests landscape as a default, as when they create the photo tour, the cover photo will always be displayed in landscape; potentially cutting off some of your photo. Other photos in the Photo Tour are randomly chosen by Airbnb to appear in a collage with some landscape and some portrait - Hosts don't have control over that.

[Laila120]

Thanks @Joan2709!  It's the cropping something we do within airbnb?

And I may undo my photo tour. I don't like how it named my rooms. It's incorrect. I which we could group and name photos ourselves. 

Best, Laila

[Joan2709]

@Laila120 

Actually, you would need to crop the photo yourself. You can do it on your phone just search the internet on how to do that. Here is the issue with phone photos. Phones are designed to use the HEIC (High Efficiency) format to save space. This is not a good format as it lessens the quality of the image. Go to your camera format settings and change to "Most Compatible" to prevent the compression and get good quality photos in .JPEG file format.

Photo Tour

You can do a workaround for the photo tour and I have done that for some of my Host clients. Here is the issue in doing that. Airbnb is putting more and more emphasis on the photo tour. They want Hosts to add amenities and accessibility (if applicable) to every photo. All photos should have captions as well. I believe this also is an algorithm "point" added to determine your search rank. Quality images of 2MB or more is preferred. You can't get that with the HEIC format on phones.

[Laila120]

Right. That all makes sense, Joan. I appreciate it!

[Joan2709 · Accepted solution]

@Laila120 

Some info on taking photos:

Taking Great Photos of Your Listing

https://www.airbnb.com/help/article/746