Introduction to Photo Center

Photo Center is an Arc XP application that enables authors, photographers, and illustrators to upload, edit, organize, optimize, and reuse images across stories and galleries. This page contains a feature overview and core concepts developers must know when working with Photo Center.

Tip

For editor-focused documentation and Photo Center user interface documentation, see Getting Started with Photo Center.

Photo Center and image formats

Photo Center enables you to upload common web image formats. The following table shows supported and unsupported image formats:

✅ Supported formats	❌ Unsupported formats
- gif	- svg
- jpg	- eps
- png	- pdf
- bmp	- avif
- webp	- psd
- tif	- raw

See Image best practices for more information.

Image types

Image types (different from image formats) enable you to categorize the content you upload to Photo Center. Photo Center recognizes three image types:

• photographs (default)
• infographics
• illustrations

Image types are enumerated in a field of the image’s Arc Native Specification (ANS) schema. You can use image types to filter images in search queries or apply different image transformations depending on the type.

To enable and configure image types, see Understanding Image Types.

Note

An image cannot be more than one type. An image that does not have an image type is treated as a photograph.

Images and ANS

The ANS schema of an image includes fields specific to the image content type. However, a minimum number of fields is required for an image ANS to be valid. The following is an example of a minimal image ANS:

{
  "version": "0.10.7",
  "type": "image",
  "owner": {
    "id": "sandbox.arctesting1"
  },
  "additional_properties": {
    "originalUrl": "https://images.unsplash.com/photo-1654452698901-cf57845dd7a7"
  }
}

See Photo Center image field mapping for a complete list of image-specific ANS fields and how they appear in the Photo Center UI.

Tip

For more information about the structure of an image ANS, see How to write the minimum ANS for a viable image document.

For examples of POST requests to the Photo API, see How to upload an image Using Photo API.

Uploading images

You can upload images to Photo Center through the Arc XP user interface or by using the Photo API.

Within the Arc XP user interface, there are two methods to upload images:

• Upload directly to Photo Center
• Upload to Composer

For more information on uploading images through the Arc XP user interface, see How to upload images

Tip

See How to upload an image using Photo API

Image best practices

Ensure the images you upload to Photo Center (either through the UI or the Photo API) follow these best practices:

• Format. Your images must be high-quality JPEGs (between 85 and 95 quality level), WebPs, or PNGs for images with transparency. For GIFs, see Optimize animated GIF files for Image Resizer.

  Note

  • Ensure your image files have an extension.
  • Image Resizer does not support Photoshop (PSD), RAW, or SVG formats.

• Image Dimensions. Ensure your images have a width between 2000 and 4000 pixels.

• File size. Keep your file sizes between 500 KB and 5 MB.

• Color profile. Ensure your images use the sRGB color profile.

Restrictions

You cannot upload files to Photo Center that are larger than 50 Mb. For GIF-specific restrictions, see Optimize animated GIF files for Image Resizer.

Working with Image Resizer v2

Image Resizer is Photo Center’s optimization and transformation tool for images. It enables you to deliver on-demand content tailored to your components and customer’s needs.

Image Resizer v2 incorporates several improvements compared to previous versions. If your organization is still using Image Resizer v1, see Migrate from Resizer v1 to v2 guide for detailed instructions on how to upgrade.

If your organization uses Image Resizer v2, see Transform images with Resizer v2.