500/"Ate It" Error on Flickr Import for specific images ~5MB, ~2600x3300 pixels

Bug Reports
1

Please fill out the following sections to the best of your ability, it will help us investigate bugs if we have this information at the outset. Screenshots are especially helpful, so please provide those if you can.

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): Website

App version number, if a mobile app issue (shown under Settings or About): NA

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) :
Chrome

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages:

Screenshots of what you are seeing (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/):

Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.):

Step 1: Login to iNaturalist, and click the Upload button. iNat opens the Add Observation page.

Step 2: On the iNat Add Observations page, click More Import Options, then select From Flickr, etc. from the drop-down. iNat opens the Import Observations page.

Step 3: On the iNat Import Observations page, iNat should default to *Source: Flickr. If not, select it. iNat should populate the first page of your Flickr photos, ~90 images.

Note: This requires a Flickr account.

Step 4: Select the photo to import. Click Import Photos. iNat takes you to the Add a Batch of Observations page.

image
image1383Ă—1291 93.6 KB

Note: This is the exact same Image A used in the Observation, but loaded from my local drive.

Step 5: The iNat Add a Batch of Observations page initially looks fine.

image
image1302Ă—1005 65.3 KB

But if you expand the Photos panel, iNat doesn’t show the thumbnail for the photo.

image
image949Ă—1845 189 KB

Normally at this point, I would select Image B, as well.

Step 6: On the iNat Add a Batch of Observations page, click the *Save All button. iNat returns the “Fail Whale” page, HTTP Status Code: 500 Internal Server Error. No other information is provided.

image
image1536Ă—1379 96.4 KB

Additional Details

Payload from submitting the Observation:

utf8: âś“
authenticity_token: cCGXEy1j1HdCSn4NP6J+7oO0mAWPSuuv3XXBgrqs3AK6jYaNm7fV1bU8BS0Xk/ili18DiD3SURHRc601UUCXWA==
observations[0][species_guess]: Banded Graphisurus
observations[0][taxon_id]: 322989
observations[0][observed_on_string]: 2024-05-29 10:22:42
observations[0][place_guess]: Beverly Square East, New York, United States
observations[0][latitude]: 40.642636
observations[0][longitude]: -73.968373
observations[0][positional_accuracy]: 
observations[0][map_scale]: 16
observations[0][location_is_exact]: false
observations[0][positioning_device]: 
observations[0][description]: Banded Graphisurus (Graphisurus fasciatus) in my front yard, May 2024
observations[0][tag_list]: 2024-05-29, 2024-05, May, May 2024, 2024, Brooklyn, Kings County, NYC, New York City, NY, New York, My Garden, Flatbush, Banded Graphisurus (Graphisurus fasciatus)
observations[0][geoprivacy]: 
observations[0][force_quality_metrics]: true
observation_field: 
photoSelectorSearchField: 2024-05-29
flickr_photos[0][]: 53757926794
editing_sounds: true
local_sounds[0][]: (binary)
2 Likes
2

And it’s only this photo? Do any of the other Flickr photos cause this error? I don’t think file size has to do with any of this, I’m able to import a huge photo like this one from Flickr.

3

Yes, it happens with either of these two specific photos, Images A or B. I tried it multiple times before trying to upload it manually.

The same error occurs if I try to add Image B from Flickr to the Observation with the manually-uploaded Image A. Or if I try to add A from Flickr.

I have another Observation from the same day with an even larger image imported from Flickr with no issues. Whatever it is, it can’t be just their sizes.

There are a few more problem isolation steps I can think of, but they all involve re-uploading - in case there’s some difference on the Flickr side - or re-processing - in case there’s something about their actual bits! - the images to see if they still trigger the issue in iNaturalist.

4

I suspect it’s something weird on the Flickr end, but I don’t know what it’d be. Can you email the photos to help@inaturalist.org? I can try to replicate.

5

Sent!

1 Like
6

It worked for me (observation since deleted).

image
image1920Ă—1158 164 KB

Looks like your Flickr page for the image has some tags in it, whereas mine doens’t. Maybe that’s causing an issue. Have you tried removing the tags one by one and seeing if that helps?

7

I was suspecting something related to tags, also. Confirmed, but it’s not what I expected.

Hypothesis: iNat chokes on tags added in Flickr when the original photo had no tags when uploaded.

My usual image processing workflow is:

  1. Offload from camera to local drive.
  2. Import into Lightroom.
  3. Process in Lightroom:
  • Cull, e.g.: lens cap on, out of focus, blurry, etc.
  • Add Titles and Descriptions
  • Verify/Correct locations
  • Tag images
  1. Select images for Observations, and crop, adjust light, color, etc.
  2. Export to local folder.
  3. Upload from local drive to Flickr.
  4. Import to iNaturalist from Flickr for Observations.

After Step 5, the Tags can be seen on the images in the local drive. After 6, the images are already tagged in Flickr, and get imported into iNat in Step 7.

I looked again at the export folder containing the original images. I noticed that these two images did not have Tags on my local drive. I hadn’t tagged them yet in LR (Step 3) before I exported them. So they also didn’t have tags when first uploaded to Flickr. I added the tags to them in Flickr after upload.

I had later tagged the images in LR. So I re-exported Image B; it has tags in the local folder. I re-uploaded it to Flickr; let’s call it Image B.2.

I was able to import Image B.2 into iNaturalist as an Observation with no issues!

Problem Isolation Notes:

  • Image B.2 has the same tags in Flickr as Image B.1 in Flickr which fails with the 500 error.
  • In Flickr, the tag order is different. I don’t know why that would be significant, but I’ve seen stranger.
  • In Flickr, Image B.1’s EXIF has no Keywords: field. This makes sense, since the image itself wasn’t tagged when imported.
  • In Flickr, Image B.2’s EXIF has the Keywords: field, though it appears truncated when viewed in Flickr. When dowloaded from Flickr, it has all its tags, from the image EXIF.

I’ve attached the downloaded Image B.2 so it can be compared with B.1. I’m leaving the Observation up for now until we can isolate this; I flagged it as a duplicate of the original.

53780121308_02640169f6_o
53780121308_02640169f6_o1920Ă—2400 308 KB

8

This problem recurred for me last night when I tried to Upload/Import this Flickr photo of an unknown mushroom to iNaturalist:
NOID gilled Mushroom (Agaricales)

However, importing this second photo of the same mushroom was successful:
NOID gilled Mushroom (Agaricales)
Here is the Observation.

Except for their dimensions, they are identical in their characteristics and history, especially re: tags, which was my last hypothesis above.

Background and Photo History

These are from a field trip exactly 10 years ago. I believe the original uploads of the low-res photos from that trip had no tags; that wasn’t part of my workflow at the time. Sometime later, I
added tags to all the photos from that Field Trip

The original photos were low-resolution exports from my camera. Earlier this year, I realized I had never imported any of the photos to iNat. I imported/uploaded several in May, but realized they were still low-res, so I bookmarked it for later completion.

Over the past week, I’ve been processing the original photos, and replacing those in Flickr:

Finally, this morning, I isolated the problem to one of the two photos I had of this mushroom. I uploaded/imported the “good” photo. Attempting to add the second photo to the new Observations fails in the same way.

Notes: