Taking an image offline (or restoring it)

Sometimes an image needs to come down from public view — to fix a mistake, respond to a concern, or comply with a legal notice. Unpinched calls this taking an image offline. An offline image is hidden from the gallery, its direct URLs return a placeholder, and the work's record is preserved so it can be restored later if appropriate.

This page covers the photographer's controls. Platform admins have additional powers (taking any image offline with a structured reason, restoring any offline image); they're documented separately.

Take one of your images offline

Sign in.
Open the collection gallery.
Click the image you want to take offline. The Image Details panel opens on the right.
In the Visibility section near the top of the panel, click Take offline.

The image disappears from the gallery immediately. Direct links to the image return a placeholder ("Image not available"). The image's record is preserved.

See your offline images

From the same Visibility section, click Offline images. The Offline panel opens, listing every image you currently have offline:

Title and UIIID
Date offlined
Reason (for your own offlines, this is Offlined by you)
A Restore to gallery button

If you have no offline images, the panel says so.

Restore an image you took offline

In the Offline panel, click Restore to gallery on the row you want.

The image returns to the gallery and its direct URLs serve again. There's no waiting period.

If you see an image you didn't offline

Sometimes the Offline panel lists images you didn't offline yourself. This happens when Unpinched has actioned the image — for example, under a copyright notice, a personality-rights concern, or a user contest that was upheld.

In those cases the row shows:

The reason category (for example, DMCA / copyright notice)
An optional note from the admin who actioned it
A Contact support link instead of a Restore button

You cannot restore these yourself. If you believe the action was made in error, use the support link.

What happens behind the scenes

When you take an image offline:

The platform records the offline state with a timestamp and a reason.
The image's record is moved out of the gallery indexes, so it stops appearing in the gallery, search, and recommendations.
A Cloudflare rule is updated so direct URLs to the image's variants return a placeholder.
The CDN cache is purged so the change propagates immediately.

When you restore an image, the same steps run in reverse.

Every offline and restore is recorded in an immutable audit log.

Limitations

Images that have already been downloaded (browser cache, third-party embeds, scrapers) cannot be recalled — the platform can only control what is served from now on.
A user-facing report mechanism (to raise a concern about someone else's image) is planned but not yet built. For now, please email [email protected].