Image Icons
A framed mountain-and-sun shape is the near-universal placeholder for "a picture goes here" — broken image fallbacks, upload zones, gallery navigation, media library icons. This page collects image icon variants across Pathwork's libraries, from a plain outline frame to filled or landscape-with-circle versions, so you can match the exact weight your placeholder or upload button needs.
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Frequently Asked Questions
This has become the de facto visual convention for 'image' across nearly every icon library and operating system, likely originating from early photo/gallery app icons and default broken-image placeholders. Because it's so widely recognized, deviating from this shape for a generic image icon can make it less immediately identifiable.
Yes, this is one of the most common uses — showing this icon inside the image container when the actual image fails to load (via an 'onerror' handler or similar) gives users a clearer visual cue than a blank space or a browser's default broken-image icon, which can look unpolished.
Image (the framed mountain shape) typically represents an existing picture or a placeholder for one, while camera represents the action of capturing a new photo, commonly used for 'take a photo' or 'change profile picture' triggers. If your button opens a camera or file picker to add a new photo, camera is usually the more accurate icon.
It's common to differentiate these — a static image icon (like this one) works well for a genuinely empty state ('no photos yet'), while a loading state is better represented with a spinner or skeleton placeholder from Pathwork's Loading & Spinner collection, since the image icon alone doesn't communicate that content is still being fetched.
Each icon keeps the license from its source library attached to it, and terms can differ depending on which library a specific icon comes from. Check the license shown on the individual icon's page before using it commercially.
Both are used depending on emphasis — the image icon works well if you want to emphasize 'this area is for photos', while an upload arrow icon (from Pathwork's Upload type page) emphasizes the action of uploading itself. Some drop zones combine both, showing the image icon as a placeholder with a smaller upload arrow as a supporting cue.