I have a similar issue since yesterday; metadata of the photos (both date and gps) will not be fetched, although this information is in the metadata of the file. I use the standard uploader (green upload button on the website). Will send a example photo per mail. Thanks!
@agujaceratops I moved your post from the original topic because that one concerned our old uploader, not the standard one.
I tested your photo and can replicate the issue. Photos created from the same camera, with the same type of metadata, were being read by the uploader prior to a day or two ago?
@tiwane Thanks! Yes, everything used to be working fine, I had no problems with uploading on Nov 21, 10:01 PM CET. I did a test with one of my older photographs that I had uploaded some time ago: I am certain metadata had been read correctly back then (as I never entered any date manually), but now when I put the same photo into the uploader, metadata are not fetched anymore.
After more testing I figured out that the issue only occurs with photos that I had cropped manually. Uncropped photos directly from the camera are working. Unfortunately, I used to crop most of my photos, as it is impossible to see anything in the thumbs otherwise. I didn’t had any updates on my PC (which runs on Linux, and I don’t have any automatic updating enabled), so changes to the software I use cannot be the cause. The older photograph I tested that was working before (as mentioned above) was also a cropped one.
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Hmm, that’s fascinating, I’ll make a bug report. Out of curiosity, which software do you use to edit your photos?
I wonder if this is related in some way to the recent filename parsing improvement? The timing seems about the same.
My problem is also with metadata not being read, but in this case it’s not reading the “description,” even though the location and date come through perfectly.
I have my photos in Apple Photos, but I don’t send them directly to iNat. I export them from Apple Photos to a folder on my desktop as .jpg, and use the standard uploader from there. Apple’s Info panel for the .jpg shows the “description,” so I know the problem isn’t with Apple Photos. The description formerly copied through to the description in iNat, but now it is blank. Apple OS 10.15.1 (19B88) on Macbook Pro 13in, loading through Chrome 78.0.3904.108.
And I’m uploading using the green Upload button.
I’m having a similar (the same?) issue, with files edited from raw with Darktable, also on Linux. I think it’s also available in Windows, if that helps with testing, although I’m not sure in what state :)
@tiwane I use Gwenview for cropping under Linux. Because it is super fast: Zoom in so that the organism is filling the screen, and use shift+c+return to crop the image to the area currently visible on the screen. With this, cropping does just take 2 seconds per image. I don’t want to miss this …
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So I like to edit some of my photos in darktable for observations, such as cropping and brightening, but all of a sudden iNaturalist isn’t adding the date/time of the photo to the observation when I import the edited photo. I have checked the photos exported from darktable and they all have the capture date in the properties, so I don’t think this is an issue on my end.
Here’s an example image with an edited darktable exported JPG on the left and on the right an untouched JPG out of the camera 
And here’s an image of the properties of those same images, (darktable edited & exported JPG on the left, untouched JPG on the right)
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Hiya, don’t want to be a pest but it would be great to get an update on what’s going on with this, as it’s a bit annoying and slows me down when uploading a bunch of observations.
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Can you please email one or two of these photos to help@inaturalist.org so we can take a look at them?
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Have just sent two, thanks Tony.
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Thanks, I’ll check them out.
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I think this bug has just been fixed, it now works for me flawlessly! A big thanks to everybody involved.
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Yes, sorry I didn’t notify this thread. @cappinkiwi, I tested the two photos you sent me and their dates and times are being read. Let us know if you still have issues.
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Yes it’s working now! Thanks very much Tony.
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