Photo — Adding photos to these notes

#photo/workflow · Note 7 of 7 · part of Photography

How images actually work in this vault, because this repository is published in a slightly unusual way and it changes the answer.

Where they go

attachments/ at the vault root. Obsidian can be told to put them there automatically: Settings → Files & Links → Default location for new attachments → In the folder specified below → attachments.

Then the ordinary Obsidian syntax works:

![[bangalore-rooftop.jpg]]
![[bangalore-rooftop.jpg|600]]        ← 600px wide
![[bangalore-rooftop.jpg|600x400]]    ← both dimensions

Here is one, proving the whole path end to end:

The unusual bit

This repository holds only markdown and images — no site, no build. The site at notes.pulsar-projects.org lives elsewhere and reads this repo over the GitHub API. Which means:

Images are never copied into the site. The published page points straight at raw.githubusercontent.com, where the file already is.

Consequences worth knowing:

A vault full of photographs does not bloat the deploy. The site stays a few hundred kilobytes no matter how many images are in here.
Filenames are case-sensitive on the raw host. Photo.JPG and photo.jpg are different files. Obsidian on macOS is more forgiving than the web will be.
Spaces are fine — they get URL-encoded — but hyphens age better.
A pushed image is live as soon as the site rebuilds; no upload step anywhere.

Sizing, before you commit

Git keeps every version of a binary file forever. A repository of 40MB RAWs becomes unpleasant to clone within a year.

Long edge 2000px is plenty for any screen
JPEG quality ~80, which lands most photographs under 1MB
Never commit RAW files. Keep those locally or in cloud storage; this vault holds the notes and the finished exports
WebP or AVIF if size matters more than universal compatibility — both render

The privacy trap

EXIF is published verbatim

Because the file is served exactly as committed, all of its metadata comes with it — including GPS coordinates. A photo taken at home, published here, tells anyone who downloads it precisely where you live.

Strip location before committing. On macOS, Preview → Tools → Show Inspector → GPS → Remove Location Info. Or in bulk:

exiftool -gps:all= -xmp:geotag= attachments/*.jpg

Camera model and settings are harmless and worth keeping. Location is not.

Alt text

![[photo.jpg]] gives no alt text. Where an image carries meaning rather than decoration, use the markdown form instead:

![The Milky Way core over a ridge line](attachments/milky-way.jpg)

What renders

Images, video (mp4, webm), audio (mp3, m4a) and PDFs all embed with the same ![[...]] syntax. So a build video or a voice note works exactly like a photograph.

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