Colorizing or modifying a submitted pic for identification

General
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It is much easier to identify a taxon that has the original coloring and isn’t blended thru a software program. I’m seeing a number of pics posted that have had color modifications and it makes it more difficult to identify.

Also, while I’m at it, if you can post your pics with proper visual orientation from top to bottom and not sideways, it makes id quicker and alot more easier to do.

Thanks!

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Hi, and welcome to the forum. Good suggestions! I don’t think I have seen any photos on iNat that have intentionally altered color. Adding an unnatural color would make ID difficult!

The ones that I see (and have also posted a few) are color casts caused by bright green foliage near the subject, subject in a red (or other color) container, golden morning light, etc. I sometimes try to remove the color casts, but am not always successful.

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If you find images that have had colors modified outside the range of normal variation of the organism, please use the Data Quality section and vote No to “Evidence accurately depicts organism or scene”. More details in this blog post: https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/118284-new-tools-to-flag-and-assess-evidence-on-inaturalist

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Welcome to the forum Art!

The sideways images you are seeing are probably related to this bug report:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/all-images-uploading-sideways/71710

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Please do leave a comment if you do this, especially if you aren’t completely certain that the colors have been digitally altered. Voting like this makes the observation casual grade, which will make it very unlikely to be IDed, and also does not notify the user in any way that this has happened. Commenting both makes it more likely that the user sees and fixes it (by e.g. uploading the original photo instead) or explains what happened (e.g. extreme lighting conditions, an aberrant individual, etc…)

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Overly modified images can be a real pain and are becoming an increasing problem. I am a camera user, but as I understand it, if you don’t apply the right settings, a lot of smartphones automatically modify images, adding filters which can change a whole lot of characteristics. The observer may not even be aware this is happening, so yes, do contact them and explain the problem. Also as @yongestation rightly says, it may even be that those colours were actually real and it could be important to know and note this. The sad and worrying thing is that we have reached a point where it comes natural to question everything we see. Is this real or not?

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