When taking pictures of the surrounding area of my future waypoint I sometimes cannot take photo’s without including readable license plates of parked cars (parked very close to the waypoint).
Can I upload these pictures or is that a reason for refusal? Can I edit the pictures to make the license plate unreadable or is that a reason for refusal?
Thanks in advance
Your main photo shouldn’t contain license plates, but the supporting photo doesn’t matter
Op makes a good questions.
If it was an area that was difficult to get an image showing vehicles would neatly covering the plates in software be against criteria?
For the main photo the license plate should not be readable. The help page (when it is available) says that obvious doctoring is not allowed. We have debated whether blanking out a license plate is obvious doctoring. To me, it is something that I would not do. But I would crop a photo so as not to include the license plate. Or if an AI tool will completely remove the car without distorting the photo or leaving a watermark, I might do that.
I have not had the situation so I am not sure what I do but my opinions are…
I would take “obvious doctoring” to be making the actual POI to be something it isn’t.
A clean line covering the plate is not doctoring the POI, it’s just saying that there was a vehicle in shot so I did what I could without effecting the POI. It is only the plate that is against criteria.
I would be more wary about using AI to totally remove the vehicle. The only way it can do that is to guess what would have been seen if the car was not there. Therefore I would see this as worse as covering the plates.
I think whether Photo editing is generally permitted or not depends on whether the POI itself is being edited or not.
For example, let’s say there is a POI for a statue.
If there is a parking lot next to the statue with cars parked there, blurring out the license plates would not affect the POI.
In this case, I think it would be permitted.
Another example: suppose there is a POI for a neighborhood map.
Suppose that neighborhood map lists the “locations and family-names of private residences.”
If you edit and blur out the “family-names” on this map, you are affecting the POI itself.
In this case, I think it is not acceptable.