iNat compresses any uploaded images to 4 Megapixels, and while that seems reasonably enough, it definitely eliminates a lot of finer details that are often crucial for ID, such as number of hairs, finer sculptures, etc. People often say: “just crop that important part and upload as a separate image”…

There’s an existing feature request related to this here: https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/increase-max-image-size-from-2048-x-2048-pixels/13627 which seems like it would be a good place for this discussion, since many of the issues likely to be brought up are laid out there. @invertebratist is the…

My apologies, that’s right. Edited the post, it’s 4MP (2000x2000=4 million)

@cthawley Yes I know those older threads, but I think it is worth having a separate discussion because iNat admins haven’t updated on this for about a year. I think it’s one of the biggest issues we have on iNaturalist. So much data is lost. I’ve heard of dozens of people not using iNat because of …

This can have sense if technically feasible. Anyway, I think you have noticed that in most observations that are not, how to say, not so satisfying as far as the quality of photos is concerned, there is not an issue of “fine details”. Definitively, in parallel, I would also try to raise the awaren…

[image] invertebratist: I’ve heard of dozens of people not using iNat because of the huge image compression. How huge the compression is depends on where one starts, of course. If people are wanting a website for archiving original high-resolution photo files, there are other more suitable o…

Rather than cropping I usually take photos of plants both from far away (showing the whole plant) and close up photos of different features. If it’s a bird or insect, I get as close as I can then crop before uploading so I don’t lose resolution. I don’t think people use all 15 images (or even close…

Exactly, that’s why I wrote that we need it as “an option” for people who spend a lot of effort to capture images with good details. Those details really matter for identification.

Yes, iNat is all about observations and identifications of most organisms. I’m not suggesting this for archiving high-resolution photo files, which isn’t the purpose of iNat. 4K is not really a high-resolution anymore- 8k is, I’d say. In my experience, 2048x2048 pixels is not enough for many cases…

Yes, that’s what most of us do. The point is, even if we photograph the organism from all the necessary angles, quite frequently we need to magnify the image to see finer sculptures later. It’s not always the case that we know which part to crop and preserve the resolution. I really do agree with t…

Can we allow users to select between better image quality or more images in an observation

General

robertarcher397 October 18, 2023, 4:37pm 2

Images are reduced to 2048 x 2048 (if square).

Topic		Replies	Views
Increase max image size (from 2048 x 2048 pixels) Feature Requests under-review	53	7203	December 9, 2025
A simple way to save iNat money? Cropping / Compiling images General	52	3597	March 4, 2021
Image upload size limit warning should be dropped as Images are automatically resized anyway Feature Requests declined	17	1770	March 14, 2023
Should I reduce the size of my photos? General	11	1364	October 31, 2023
Clarification on photo resizing vs resolution General question	25	2819	January 3, 2024

Can we allow users to select between better image quality or more images in an observation

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