Photo format not supported only for cropped images (Android app)

Bug Reports
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Please fill out the following sections to the best of your ability, it will help us investigate bugs if we have this information at the outset. Screenshots are especially helpful, so please provide those if you can.

Platform (Android, iOS, Website): Android

App version number, if a mobile app issue (shown under Settings or About): 1.30.15

Browser, if a website issue (Firefox, Chrome, etc) : N/A

URLs (aka web addresses) of any relevant observations or pages:

Screenshots of what you are seeing (instructions for taking a screenshot on computers and mobile devices: https://www.take-a-screenshot.org/):

Screenshot_20240720-123834
Screenshot_20240720-1238341080Ă—2400 125 KB

Screenshot_20240720-124700
Screenshot_20240720-1247001080Ă—2400 211 KB

Description of problem (please provide a set of steps we can use to replicate the issue, and make as many as you need.):

I am no longer able to upload photos to the iNaturalist Android app, including photos that were successfully uploaded two days ago. If attempted, the message “Photo format not supported” appears. All photos are .jpg, and no phone camera or phone settings have been changed.
For example, I was able to upload the photo of the Mormon Cricket (specs pictured above)as an observation successfully two days ago. Now, using the same image, the “format not supported” message appears.

Edit: New information. When I use the “raw” photo, it uploads normally. However, after I go through and crop my photo in the Google Photos built-in editor, something I’ve always done, the message appears. This was not previously an issue, as the aforementioned Mormon Cricket observation contains a cropped image that uploaded fine the first time two days ago. Now the same image will not upload.

Step 1: Click on “+” button to add observation
Step 2: Click “choose image”
Step.3: pick “Google photos” out of the options for image sources
Step 4: Select desired unedited images from “Photos” or “Camera” folder
Step 5: Photos upload as normal
Step 6: Go into Google Photos app and crop photos in the built in editor
Step 7: Repeat steps 1-4
Step 8: pop-up message appears stating “photo format not supported”

3 Likes
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Hmm, I’m not able to replicate on my Pixel 8 (with latest system update) but anotehr staff member had this happen to them. Is there any chance you could share a screen recording of the process with help@inaturalist.org?

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This is happening to me on the Pixel 5 also, running android OS ver. 14. Haven’t updated the OS or the iNaturalist app since the previous time of being able to upload photos to iNaturalist just fine a few days ago.

I tried both photos from the device as well as online from Google photos. Same issue with the cropped photos saying format not supported either way. I check the file format and it’s .jpg, so that seems unlikely.

I was actually going from the photos and tapping “share” on the photo and then selecting the app I wanted to share it to (iNaturalist) so that’s a bit different from the steps you describe starting in iNaturalist. Nevertheless, same error. For what it’s worth, I can tap “share” on cropped photos and they upload normally into other apps. Therefore I think this is a problem with iNaturalist interacting with the phone somehow.

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It’s happening to me too. I sent a screen recording to that address. Hope it’s helpful!

1 Like
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Sent! I had to compress it quite a bit but it should still be clearly visible.

1 Like
6

There’s a long list of reasons this might be happening, but I’d just note “it’s just .jpg so it should be fine” isn’t quite such a simple thing.

There are a number of optional elements in the JPEG standard, some of which have historically been patent encumbered and not implemented by all decoders, like arithmetic coding. Unless you’ve switched it off, most phones are constantly updating apps and support libraries, and the phone wars mean they’re always pushing the edge of trying to differentiate how much Betterer they are than the competition, so it’s not impossible they’ve done something not broadly compatible to increase compression efficiency in a recent update.

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I have this problem too since about two days. Photos 6.90.0.650298333, iNat 1.30.15.

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Another bit of information, I just tried disabling Ultra HDR in the Camera app, thinking it might be what’s causing the problem, but I still get the same error after cropping.

If it helps, I can send a cropped photo that is not possible to import, so you can inspect the contents.

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Thanks for the clarification about the complications about .jpeg files! The only thing that confuses me is that it seems like we all developed this problem three days ago, and as far as I can see there were no updates to Google Photos/the Google Pixel camera in that time, and definitely no system updates. However, it seems pretty likely that since we all have Pixels there was some kind of change to the way files are saved that I’m not seeing any evidence of on my end.
(Other than this issue).

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Pixel Camera was last updated June 10. My last system update was July 5. Google Photos was last updated July 8. None of these dates are really consistent with the date this issue started appearing for me, which was July 20.
Edit: I suppose a really minor update that wasn’t recorded/advertised to users could have been enough to cause this?
Edit (again): however, that wouldn’t explain why only some Pixel users are experiencing this issue

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Me, too. Just started today. Motorola Android 12.

1 Like
12

Ah, that’s interesting. So it’s not just Pixel users.

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Just thought of a possible reason for this issue relating to a recent international news report. See reports on the global technology outages due to a defective Microsoft update.

Here’s a link for more info: https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2024/07/20/helping-our-customers-through-the-crowdstrike-outage/

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I noticed this first last night (2024-07-20 18:00 ET). It seems to be an issue with CROPPED images only. It just uploaded an un-cropped image without complaint.

I have:
Pixel 6a: Android 14
iNaturalist: 1.30.15 (608)

I just transferred the same cropped image to my desktop and uploaded it to the iNaturalist website without complaint. This is a problem with the app, not the website.

When I try to do that on my phone, it somehow uses the app anyway. When I uninstall the app, I can use my phone to upload the same image to the website that I couldn’t upload with the app.

15

I too am seeing this issue and have a Motorola phone

16

This doesn’t address the issue, but I always crop my photos in the iNat Android app instead of in Google Photos. So I haven’t been having this problem.

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Same bug here since yesterday.

How to solve it: create your observation with an original (not cropped) picture. Then, upload your photos to Google photos, then download them to a computer and add them to your obs.

A hint maybe: on my computer, all these cropped picture are tagged as “created on december 31 1979, 23:00” but in Google Photos on my Pixel 5 they are in the correct file, July 2024. There is an inconsistency with the date, maybe it is what iNat doesn’t like.

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OK, I can finally replicate this - thanks for all the info and videos. We’re investigating, it does seem to be related to a change in Google Photos, so if people are using a different app for photos, they shouldn’t be affected. I doubt it’s related to CrowdStrike, that’s a Microsoft issue.

As a workaround until this is fixed, I’d suggest importing the full file from Google Photos or your phone’s Files/Gallery app and cropping in the iNaturalist app, as @thomaseverest suggests. We’re sorry for the inconvenience.

5 Likes
19

Cool! I’ve been using a different workaround: crop all photos in Google Photos on Mobile (faster to do them in one big batch, plus filter while there), have them sync, then download them from photos.google.com and upload them to iNat through the Web UI (batch upload). I find the approach to be faster for large batches.

I think there’s no need to be sorry though, you’re building a great product and software breaks sometimes at points of interaction. Thanks for fixing the issue!

2 Likes
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What we think is happening is that Google Photos is sending us some sort of draft version of the photo, not the actual completed image. We’re continuing to investigate.

Also, just a heads-up that we don’t mark bug reports as solved until the fix for it has been released.