Wondering how to go about this. I’ve seen some photos which have been edited in a very unnatural way. I turn a blind eye to one guy who likes to place random light bloom into many of their photos but another person is uploading their wildlife shots with fake backgrounds such as the sky as background. Is iNaturalist ok with this?
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Fake backgrounds seem a bit of a problem to me just because you can’t see the actual habitat the organism was photographed in. Things like light bloom sound distracting from the organism itself.
This is why I personally don’t like to edit my photos any more than basic cropping, and adjusting brightness.
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Absolutely not. The natural environment is an essential part of any observation and identification. I edit my photos by adjusting light and contrast, focus stacking macro shots, and reducing noise. These actions enhance the informational value of the image without altering its content.
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I understand highlighting or adjusting light and contrast to enhance ID’able features. I do it on occasion in a limited way.
The question begs. How genuine is the observation? Is it from a photo they took or clipped off the internet, cropped and placed onto a random background?
I have not seen anything like this, but agree the natural surroundings are an important factor for ID purposes and also in determining is an organism captive/cultivated.
Question: Does the pin location accurately depict where this organism would normally be sighted?
I would probably flag it as captive as it is not an original photo of an organism in the original place setting.
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Fairly sure they are their images, although the location on a few are fairy suspect as they are just using a precise spot for all of them. That sounds like a decent alternative, to flag via captive. Some are looking more akin to abstract art than natural wildlife photography.
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https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/214779308 High key hippo
https://inaturalist.ala.org.au/observations/214781424 Low key lion
I have occasionally added a more arty edit of an animal I have seen because they were particularly good candidates for a certain type of edit and I completed those then went to add photos to iNat and included these.
The hippo background was just water. You don’t want the original as it will be hideously over-exposed as part of that technique.
The lion photo original background was golden hour sandy terrain, dry looking bush and not the greatest photo otherwise. I have plenty of other lion photos taken in the area. And these are the 2 arty shots amongst hundreds of observations taken on that trip.
It is something I might do on occasion but certainly not regularly and I am not going to change backgrounds in the sense of adding something in that is more than a vignette. Besides I’m only a beginner editor.
It’s a tricky thing though. Is cleaning up a photo to remove ticks from a lion’s face acceptable? I wouldn’t because to me it reflects the reality of a lion’s life but other people might arguing that it detracts from the lions features.
Or if you present a series of photos and play with one of the photos eg lighting to highlight a pattern that isn’t easily seen otherwise.
Now that Lightroom uses AI to help with editing photos, where is the limit of what is acceptable?
I don’t trust any wildlife photo by a professional because I know how much editing goes into them.
Is using something like Topaz to improve the quality of the photo okay?
It’s getting increasingly complex. Where are the limits.
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I saw a bunch of such observations once. The photos were beautiful and neat portraits of birds, with blurred background. I reported them as AI-generated as they looked like that to me and also some “AI-checking” websites suggested that. It was concluded that these photos were real photos “only” edited. I prefer photos which don’t leave doubts that they are real, they don’t have to be pretty but to be a documentation of observation.
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I might be in the minority here, but both cases seem OK to me. Modifying the background isn’t ideal because it removes the potential for habitat context, but I don’t think that’s a requirement of making a legitimate observation. It’s not apples to apples, but it’s similar to observations of pinned/pressed specimens. In terms of edits, I think that any photos modifying an organism’s features probably shouldn’t be used for iNat observations.
I don’t think this is what you mean by light bloom, but some cameras will automatically brighten around a subject, probably as a way to highlight it. Usually this is most obvious when a blue sky is the background. My little SX50 does this, and it drives me nuts!
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I agree that including the natural background can be helpful sometimes in IDing. But if the background is sky or snow, resulting in no feature, the photo might appear to be modified when it hasn’t been. I’ve taken a few of those where it might look like I photoshop-removed everything around the subject.
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I’m not sure if I have seen any observations with modified backgrounds. It would look out of place and seem suspicious. Some people do tend to overedit or oversaturate photos to the point that they can be misleading. I only crop, tone down highlights, and adjust the brightness depending upon how light or dark the image is. There’s getting a good photographic shot, and then there’s getting a good ID shot. And then there’s me trying to get both before the animal moves.
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I think there’s a spectrum here and obviously a lot of nuance and without a policy in place (which I kind of doubt will happen unless this becomes a major problem) nobody is going to 100% agree. I personally feel, though, that the image itself being composited with an “inaccurate” background doesn’t totally invalidate the observation to the point of it needing to be casual – as long as the date & location are still accurate, the organism was in that place at that time, even if valuable information was lost from the photo. I can see an argument, though, that replacing the background makes it impossible to verify that the location is accurate, but I think that’s already practically impossible to verify a lot of the time (unless you’re, like, Rainbolt or something.)
Any level of editing below “completely replacing the background” seems obviously fine to me, though I would still strongly discourage editing techniques like “cutting the subject out completely from the background” or “replacing the sky with a prettier sky” – they can still remove valuable information from an observation.
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I will start this by saying I much prefer photos with animals in proper context, and I only crop (to square), I would like to adjust brightness but I don’t know how to use software, and iNat ‘identify’ has capability for this.
BUT
There is precedent in macro, both for the unintentional fact that the background is not visible due to shallow depth of field and use of flash, but intentional in some cases, where photography onto a plain white background is preferable; there is even a project devoted to it. These are to make it easier to ‘cut and paste’ an image into a guide/key. I have taken some of these photos for the project myself, though I try to include a natural shot in the observation as well.
Outside of macro, if it were some obscure species, and it helped highlight diagnostic features, I could see the benefit of including both.
As for the case of ‘touching up’, or removing other organisms/parasites for aesthetic reasons, I should think flickr is the more suitable platform for those photos.
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I come down on the side of leaving natural, even ugly, backgrounds as is. It’s not that we as a community might mis-identify a hippo or lion, but the context of the observation is important. I would suggest that IF one chooses to modify/remove the background, then an explicit explanation should be included in the Notes with the observation explaining what was removed and why…with every such observation. In the absence of a suitable background and/or the absence of notes, I would typically vote such observations as “location is inaccurate”, since the pin placement can’t be verified.
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Adding things can create problems, but if it’s a matter of removing or blurring background, it doesn’t sound like an issue beyond possibly leaving out something helpful. A catch, though, for smart background blurring is that it’s made more for people. It will often blur out parts of subject, possibly changing identifiable features. Accidentally using Portrait Mode for iNat has blurred a lot of stems and other parts to oblivion, leaving flower heads floating in space with their extremities trimmed off.
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If an arty photo, then upload the unprocessed photo in the obs as well. Then it is clear that it is genuine - my photo in that place with habitat info.
I did trip over one obs I flagged for copyright. The pro photographer and the iNat observer were the same person.
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I would say altering a whole background is certainly not ideal, but I still think they should be able to become research grade as evidence of an organism. If we can take an observation to research grade based on someone’s sketch of the organism in their journal (which is allowed), I don’t see how posting a recognizable photo of that same organism with the original background removed is any less convincing evidence of what was seen. Sure, in situ photos sometimes contain useful habitat information, but there are loads of photos of preserved specimens at RG too. Specimen pics certainly don’t have any “background habitat” evidence either, as the background was “altered” by taking the organism out of the wild and placing it in front of a screen to take the picture. Taking the photo in the wild and then digitally placing the organism on a different background doesn’t seem any different to me. I wouldn’t do it, but I don’t think it’s a big deal.
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I’ve posed many herps on natural or semi-natural substrates in order to get a good diagnostic photo. The data associated with the pic is for where I found the animal, perhaps right where I took the photo but maybe not. The voucher photo is no different than a preserved specimen which might be photo’d somewhere other than where it was collected.
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This is iNat! Do an ultra-zoomed close-in of just the ticks and post them as a separate observation 
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I would say it’s acceptable but I would still discourage it. There’s value in including that in an observation, especially if you upload the ticks as their own observation and/or use observation fields to document the interaction between the two species.
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Why dont you include both photos? Thats the best option imo. That way you have the pretty one and the og one if anyone needs it. Can also showcase your editing skills (which is good because most people, including me, have no idea how to do it)
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