Capturing Photos with the Mobile App

The quality of your inspection output — findings, scope, narrative — depends directly on the quality of your field photos. This guide covers how to capture photos the AI can read well and that stand up to carrier review.

(Dimensions are a separate matter: they come from the LiDAR scan, not from your photos. See LiDAR scanning.)

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Before you start

1. Create the job on the web dashboard or in the iOS app before you arrive at the property. This pre-loads the job so you can work even without signal.
2. Open the job in the iOS app and navigate to the Capture tab.
3. Check your storage — photos queue on the device until they upload, so leave room for the whole session.
4. Verify location is on — GPS and timestamp travel with each photo. Go to iOS Settings → Estimatics → Location and confirm it's set to While Using App with Precise Location enabled.

The file limit: a single photo can be up to 25 MB, on every plan. Nothing an iPhone produces comes close, so in practice this only bites on imported files.

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Starting a capture session

From the job's Capture tab in the iOS app:

1. Tap the camera icon or + Add Media button
2. The Estimatics camera opens — this is a native camera interface with area tagging built in
3. You're ready to shoot

The Estimatics camera is separate from your iPhone's Photos app. Photos taken here are tied directly to the job and sync to the cloud automatically — they do not save to your Camera Roll by default.

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Assigning photos to areas

Every photo should be assigned to a room or area before or immediately after capture. This is how the AI knows where each piece of damage is located on the property.

Areas come from a 100-entry room catalog shipped with the product — 52 residential, 38 commercial, and 10 standard entries covering roof, elevations, and general use — grouped into families like Living Areas, Bedrooms, Bathrooms, Kitchen & Dining, Garage & Storage, Utilities, Roof, Elevation, Retail, Commercial Kitchen, Work Areas and Common Areas. Your account can edit that catalog in Settings → Room Catalog.

To assign an area while shooting:

1. Tap the area selector at the top of the camera screen
2. Select the area you're currently photographing
3. All photos taken until you change the selection are tagged to that area

To reassign a photo after the fact:

1. Open the photo in the Capture gallery
2. Tap Edit Area
3. Select the correct area

Tip: Assign areas as you go — don't wait until after the inspection to tag 200 photos. It takes 5 seconds per area change and saves 30 minutes of organization later.

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Photo technique for best AI results

The AI reads the photos you send it — which you do deliberately, from the Analyze module; it does not run by itself when an upload finishes. These guidelines produce significantly better findings:

Coverage

• Photograph every surface — roof, all four elevations, every interior room affected
• Don't skip "minor" damage — a granule loss pattern, a cracked vent boot, or a dented gutter is worth documenting even if it seems small
• Take overlapping shots — for large surfaces like a roof, take photos that overlap by 30–40% so the AI can piece together the full picture

Distance

• Establish shots (full view): Step back far enough to capture the entire surface or elevation in one frame. These give the AI spatial context.
• Mid-range shots (3–10 feet): Show the area of damage clearly within the larger surface.
• Close-ups (1–3 feet): Capture the specific damage detail — impact marks, cracks, lifted shingles, water staining. The AI uses these to classify damage type and severity.

Use all three distances for every significant damage area — not just close-ups.

Lighting

• Avoid shooting directly into the sun — backlighting washes out surface detail
• Overcast days are ideal — diffuse light shows texture and damage without harsh shadows
• For dark surfaces (black shingles, dark siding): use your iPhone's exposure tap to prevent underexposure
• For interior water damage: turn on room lights and supplement with your iPhone flashlight if needed

Stability

• Blur costs you directly: clarity is 40 of the 100 points in the photo score the AI returns with each finding
• Tap to focus before shooting on textured surfaces
• On ladders: brace your elbow against your body before tapping the shutter

What to avoid

• Fingers in the frame — more common than you'd think on ladder shots
• Extreme angles — a surface shot from far off perpendicular is hard for the AI to read, and hard for a reviewer to judge
• Screenshots of other documents — only field photos belong in the Capture module
• Duplicate shots — identical photos from the same angle don't add evidence value and slow AI processing

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Minimum photo counts by inspection type

These are starting points — complex damage warrants more coverage.

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Syncing your photos

Photos upload automatically while you shoot if you have a signal. The job shows an upload indicator while there's work outstanding: uploading, failed, or no network. When there's nothing pending, there's no indicator.

You can keep shooting regardless. Photos queue on the device and upload as soon as a connection is available — that's the whole point of the queue.

→ How media syncs to the cloud

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Reviewing photos before you leave the property

Before you leave the site, do a quick review in the Capture tab:

1. Scroll through all photos and confirm every area is covered
2. Check for any obviously blurry or poorly-lit shots — retake them while you're still on site
3. Verify the sync indicator shows photos uploading or synced

It takes 3 minutes and prevents a return trip.

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Frequently asked questions

Can I add photos from my iPhone Camera Roll? Yes. In the Capture tab on the web dashboard, use the Upload button to add photos from any source. On iOS, tap + Add Media → Photo Library to select from your Camera Roll. Note that Camera Roll photos don't carry the same GPS and timestamp metadata as photos taken through the Estimatics camera.

How many photos can I add to a job? There's no per-job photo cap on a paid plan. The one limit that exists is per file: 25 MB each. (The 14-day free trial is capped at 150 photos across the account — that cap is the trial's, not the plan's.)

Can I delete a photo after it's been uploaded? Yes. Tap the photo in the gallery and tap Delete. It leaves the job, the gallery, and anything composed from it afterward. It is a soft delete on the record — the evidence log keeps the fact that the file existed and that it was removed, which is what makes the log worth anything.

What file formats are supported? JPG, HEIC (iPhone native), PNG and GIF. Photos captured through the Estimatics camera are encoded as JPEG before upload. RAW is not supported.

The AI didn't find damage I can clearly see in a photo — what happened? AI findings depend on photo clarity, distance, and angle. If damage isn't being detected, try adding a close-up photo from a more direct angle. You can also add a manual finding in the Analyze tab regardless of what the AI detected.

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Last updated: September 2026 · Questions? Email support@aiestimatics.com