I just drag two photos onto the same observation, instead of two separate observations.
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If you upload one photo as an observation, and while viewing that observation just drag and drop any other photos over the top of the photo already loaded, and it will add them to the observation. At the time you upload the observations, you can drag one âcardâ and drop it on another, so that they combine. Or highlight two or more cards and choose combine button at the top of the page, and they will be merged. Some of this might be easier the first few times if you have an experienced computer user to help you, but by experimenting with it I think you will understand how it works.
You can write in French in the forum, and we can translate our end. There are also many French speaking people in the forum so please feel free to use your first language :)
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It would also make a sizeable difference in the ability to ID them. When I see a picture of an estuary with wharf pilings, IDed as âbirds,â it would be nice if I could actually focus on the birds.
In my experience IDing for others, I find the opposite problem: leaving in the background vegetation can make it difficult to know which plant the observer had in mind. Is it the one on the left, or the right? Is it the tall one, or the shorter one in front of it? The shrub branch, or the vine climbing through the shrub branches? If the observation is an âUnknown,â or just âPlants,â I canât really help when there is too much background vegetation included.
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Several replies have mentioned that itâs possible to crop photos using your own photo viewing/editing software, and while thatâs true, I think itâs overlooking the real point-- itâs inconvenient and forces you to worry about losing a great photo by saving your crop over the photo, not as a copy.
Both of those things mean itâs just not worth it, so 99% of people arenât going to bother.
I will openly admit that I am one such lazy person, and I still wish iNat would have built-in tools so it would be painless enough to actually do. If it only took me a minute or two per observation batch, I wouldnât mind at all.
Personally I have wished to crop out the backgrounds on some of my posts, but knowing that I have to:
â˘open the full-sized image,
â˘load editing tools (other people w/ slow computers will know exactly why Iâve listed this as separate step 
)
â˘crop it,
â˘save a copy of my edit,
â˘upload the images to iNat
â˘delete my cropped copies after uploading, since they have no other use and are wasting space on my computer storage
â˘(and then worry about accidentally deleting an uncropped photo)
â˘better go through the recycle bin to double check, just in case
⌠makes me feel too overwhelmed to mess with it. Ultimately, it takes a little bit more than just cropping it. Especially when youâre uploading 20-50 observations that could easily contain 30-75 (if not more) photos.
Cropping it while already uploading observations would just require a few clicks (perhaps an âeditâ tab, then a crop action, selecting the size, and confirming), and I would have zero worries about messing up my source photos or scrambling to restore accidental deletions. I would totally use that option. Clean and easy.
I hope this provides a little bit of perspective on why having a built-in tool would be different from existing external ones. 
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Yes, it does mean a good deal more work in writing the description, and of course I dont expect many people to be able to ID the focus plant in these obs, at least not from the first image alone. If I need help with ID I have to do the other thing, if possible; ie if I can, get close to the subject and get a clear picture.
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Animals are easy to ID, and a single photo might do it. But it often (yea, usually!) takes a greater amount of detail to identify a plant. Insects also. Multiple photos should be regarded as essential. And a non-professional looking for ID help is going to supply as much detail on these organisms as possible, not knowing what will turn out to be the essential bristle, or tibia, (or whatever).
For these taxa, a single-photo observation is likely to be an unidentifiable waste of memory.
I know Iâm preaching to the choir, hereâŚ
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No, there isnât a cropping feature on the web interface. At least not on Safari interface. Iâd love to see a screen shot of yours.
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Just for clarification. Thereâs a difference between multiple angles, which is very valid in my opinion, and what is almost exactly the same shooting condition replicated many times. I mean same lighting, same distance, same focus, same angle. Like someone held the button down and took 10-20 pics and just put them all up.
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Yes, there isnât. I didnât exactly say there was.
This is what your camera has a macro setting for.
In my observations (mainly flowers) I usually have
- one typical shot of the âflowerâ
- one from the side or back of the flower
- one of the leaves
- one of the whole plant with environment
all cropped to screen filling 1024x768 size and showing just the relevant part.
Often obviously it is not possible or necessary for ID to take as many shots, as I am usually hiking in a group and have to catch up.
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On the non-interchangeable-lens-camera the macro setting - often a little flower - is usually allowing the lens to extend further from the sensor (taking longer to focus). It usually selects a larger aperture.
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That seems like a lot of steps to me. I donât know how your computer works, but with mine, opening the full sized image defaults to a software with built-in editing tools. I donât save a copy of my edit because the edit is the picture I actually want; this eliminates the step of deleting the uncropped (not the cropped) image, because it is the one taking up wasted space.
If I have a picture of blue sky, a telephone wire, and at the center you can see, small, a Great Kiskadee perched on the wire, what possible use could I have for the uncropped image? Crop it down to emphasize the Great Kiskadee and keep just the cropped version.
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Most of my photos are of fungi. I keep the originals as they will have the meta data attached to them such as GPS, size of photo in pixels, and half a dozen other things. In a future you canât imagine yet, you may need to know exactly where you saw that xyz specimen ⌠such as me, now, on iNaturalist.
I surprised myself when posting up observations and entering them into FungiSight, a project, that once I knew the general area where the photo was takenâI love satellite viewâI could describe the local veg and trees pretty well. Photos are a great memory aid.
I also keep all the decent crops I make. (Itâs OK. I have a dedicated external hard drive, fungi donât clutter up my laptop.) You never know when youâll need them. A 4x6 cm crop for FB for example wonât do for printing.
Youâll need a 300 ppi for printing ⌠I was asked to make up an album of printed photos for one of the parks where I regularly went. Management uses that album to interest older people who canât manage computers. And you never know when you might not want to print out a few shots for a guidebook or Landcare brochure or grant application.
Lately, as I have mentioned, Iâm studying a particular genus of fungi and taking lots of shots. I keep the best of the originals and include environmental detail to be able to later remember that this gill shot of a little Parasola mushroom came from the plant-pot that also has ginger growing in it. It helps remembering.
I do everything on Preview, which came with my laptop.
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