Incorporate basic image editing tools (crop, rotate)

Hi,

I remember that I’ve seen this feature in the Google Group but I don’t think it’s been posted here.

I’d like to have an option to apply basic image editing before or after uploading a picture.
Most basic edits would be cropping or rotating a picture.

I think that would be a good idea. I tend to crop my pictures or add in arrows/circles to highlight the intended organism for the observation, so doing that directly on iNat may actually speed up the process when it comes to uploading larger observation batches.

5 Likes

it’s already possible to rotate images on the website, cropping would be nice (though also maintaining the original would be even better)

3 Likes

I like the idea of keeping the original. But place the cropped image in front of the original in the ordering. So users don’t have to figure out how to change the order of photos (which is currently not very user friendly) to get the “closeup” crop as the main image.

If a cropping feature is added, could the AI or image dimensions be used to suggest a user crop images that seem like they would benefit from it? With a “Don’t suggest cropping again” checkbox of course.

9 Likes

To my knowledge the rotation on the website has never worked. I’ve checked photos several months down the line after rotating and no change has been made, even after clearing cache.

2 Likes

oh, my bad. yeah they should fix it

I was just able to rotate this photo: https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/33261513 Would you mind trying again and if it’s not working, file a bug report?

1 Like

Adding a crop feature to the mobile cameras, at least, is on the table. I think once we get the new Seek version ready we can turn some attention to the camera part of the iNat mobile apps.

5 Likes

Alright. I’ll do that. I was just speaking to @jon_sullivan recently about the same issue.

1 Like

We did have a bug that affected profile pics and project banners, which was recently fixed. I believe image rotation might have also been affected by it.

1 Like

Just as a test, this is one of my uploads that has a photo rotated incorrectly (the photo should be landscape-oriented, not portrait): https://www.inaturalist.org/photos/32504023

I hit “rotate left” yesterday and I’m still not seeing any change.

2 Likes


Maybe a caching issue? It’s landscape for me.

1 Like

Interesting. It surely must be a cache issue then, as it is still portrait for me!

You might want to try a hard refresh. Here are instructions for how to perform a hard refresh: https://www.ideamktg.com/blog/what-is-a-hard-refresh/

1 Like

That used to work for me actually. But it doesn’t seem to anymore.

I’m in favor of allowing the option to crop, zoom, and/or rotate photos, both prior to uploading (as part of the upload process, similar to Instagram), and afterwards. The value of this function would be especially valuable for the mobile app, but also for the desktop version. As some images are automatically resized by iNat, it makes all the more sense to be able to crop and make the best use of space. And presumably, having less visual clutter would also help Computer Vision develop better suggestions.

3 Likes

FWIW, the latest Android beta release (version 1.17.0) has an image editor. You’ll need to edit an obs and tap on a photo to open it. If you’re not in the beta program, you can join at https://play.google.com/apps/testing/org.inaturalist.android

7 Likes

Yay! Two comments: the tap to edit isn’t super intuitive, are you definitely keeping it that way or might you change it? Second, the default aspect ratio is “Original”, but I think “Free” is probably the more expected option – at least, that’s what I was expecting.

Amazing! Thank for this valuable addition the app.
The caption for “Bearbeiten” in the German localisation is a bit cut off:

I have scaled a picture and the preview in the app is now very blurry. It’s fine though when I click on the picture. I guess it’s some kind of a caching problem in the app.

What’s intuitive to you might not be intuitive to me, so it would help me out a lot of you could describe the problem in more detail. Were you expecting an edit option somewhere else? If so, where? Was there some other issue?

Any other opinions here? Personally, every single time I crop a photo the very first thing I do is set the aspect ratio to “original” or “square.”

Can “Edit” be translated as a shorter word in German? I suppose we could also just get rid of those text labels.

I’m having trouble replicating this. Can you provide a list of steps I can follow to reproduce this problem? E.g. it would help to know if this is an obs you just made in the app or one you made on the website and are editing in the app, whether the photo came from your device or a cloud service like Google Photos, etc.