In a project that I manage, participants sometimes upload observations using a collage (for example: overview, detail, habitat etc. combined into one image), instead of uploading multiple individual photos. Here are two examples: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/290076998 https://www.inatu…

Those photos do work. Probably depends on the resolution of the original photo.

[image] dtinner: Do such collages interfere with or confuse the iNaturalist Computer Vision model? Could they negatively affect species identification, or is it generally fine as long as the organism is clearly visible? I think you mean montage, as a collage creates a completely new image by …

[image] naturalist_nate: why bother with the extra step of making the photo collage when inat can handle multiple photo uploads just fine? In some of my earlier observations, I did not know that an observation can comprise more than one photo. I made collages thinking that it was necessary if…

[image] bazwal: I can zoom in on the details without any problems. iNat downsizes photos to a maximum of 2048 x 2048 pixels. So if a user makes a montage out of 4 images, the amount of detail you can zoom into is often considerably less than if each of the images had been posted individually.…

If a photo collage is done right it could serve as an excellent default taxon photo.

[image] bazwal: That’s curious - I can zoom in on the details without any problems. There’s a pixel dimension limit on iNat. In my experience, that pixel dimension limit already causes loss of diagnostically important data when uploading separate images. Combining multiple images into one jus…

One other potential problem is illustrated by the second example (mayflies). In this montage, there are pictures of different individuals, with different numbers of tail appendages. Because it is a single image with potentially multiple taxa, there is no way to click “No” on “Evidence related to a s…

[image] spiphany: iNat downsizes photos to a maximum of 2048 x 2048 pixels. So if a user makes a montage out of 4 images, the amount of detail you can zoom into is often considerably less than if each of the images had been posted individually. [image] aspidoscelis: There’s a pixel dimens…

[image] bazwal: This need not be true at all. If you take quadrants of four 2048 x 2048 photos with the same resolution and assemble them into a montage, it will have no effect whatsoever on the final resolution. There are obviously countless bad ways to prepare photos of any kind, so that’s not…

Do photo collages confuse the iNaturalist Computer Vision model?

General

misumeta June 16, 2025, 9:00pm 15

There is another aspect: iNat restricts and reduces the resolution of every single picture. To save the maximum of details for an observation it’s best to cut out what you want to identify rather than combining pictures.

https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/notify-user-when-new-observation-matches-time-stamp-of-pre-existing-observation/253/10

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Do photo collages confuse the iNaturalist Computer Vision model?

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