What is Street View Trusted

Google accredits photographers and agency’s with the Street View Trusted badge based on their Local Guides portfolio. If a photographers has enough images that reach Google’s desired quality standards.

When you choose a Trusted photographer you can be sure they have the required experience and skill to get your business looking great on Google Maps. I’ve spent years adding images to Google maps that help the community navigate our complex urban environment. My images have been viewed millions of times and willl be abvailable soon on our upcoming portfolio section.

There are three major requirements for trusted photographers to join the program;

Photosphere Image Quality

• Images need to be high resolution. That is, they need a high pixel count. As a 360 image can be viewed from many angles, a lot of detail is required to keep the image looking good.
• The photospheres need to be free of any obvious stitching areas. All 360 degree photos are composites of many images and when these don’t align properly you get stitching errors. Real Lux uses the NCtech Iris360 which massively reduces the chances of stitiching errors. The camera also stitches the image before preview, so problem images can be taken again.
• Photographs need to be free of dynamic range problems. Dynamic range is the difference in brightness of a scene, ranging from the brightest to darkest area. This is often a problem as many indoor sights have very bright windows and areas in shadow. Real Lux uses High Dynamic Range imagery to compensate for this.

Maps Walk-through Connectivity

• To complete the shoot, images need to be properly connected together for a good walk-through experience.
• A good Street View Photographer should be able to plan the spacing between each photo.

Image Appropriateness

• Trusted photographers should know the rules about posting images to Google Maps.
• Images need to have accurate GPS information.
• There should be no hateful or illegal content.