Looking at local guides' photo contributions has taught me that uploading dark photos is a very common mistake on Google Maps. This issue alone can prevent your photos from being selected as cover and featured images of places. And you will be having a hard time attracting lots of views. Photos full of brightness, color, and contrast attract attention a lot better than dark photos.

The following two illustrations demonstrate what too little and too much brightness looks like.

On Google Maps your photos compete for the attention of Maps users. And the competition is fierce with millions and millions of other photos. Being too dark is such an obvious mistake. Human eyes will always be drawn to bright and colorful images. And dark photos are never bright and colorful.

Dark images don't represent the places very well when details are lost and when many of the other photos are bright and colorful.

How to fix this problem

The good news is that you can take steps to prevent this issue:

• Don't shoot in low-light situations if your camera is unable to produce high-quality photos in the dark.
• Figure out if you can adjust the settings in your camera to increase the exposure of every shot.
• Process your shots before uploading them to Google Maps.

In this tutorial, you can learn How to adjust the brightness, contrast, and saturation. You can find videos demonstrating how to improve the brightness and colors using Google Photos.

If you hope to attract more views on Google Maps you could delete old photos that are too dark. And (more importantly) avoid uploading dark photos in the future. You can also flag dark photos on Google Maps as 'Poor quality'.

Find Google's official statements about this issue in the Photo Rules. Scroll down and open 12: No shadowy lighting.

A related problem is shooting towards the light source. Learn more about backlight by hitting "Suggested next page" below.