When uploading photos to an observation, they are not uploading in order of selection. This often makes the first photo a photo that does not immediately convey what the observation is supposed to be of. For example, a photo of leaves on the ground to show the trees growing in the vicinity of a mushroom (which is important for many fungi IDs) See screenshots to see order of selection and actual upload order.
Well, I suppose it is just not a bug, but a feature?..
I mean - I’ve noticed exactly that peculiarity myself, some time ago, while using multiple photos upload - though I do not use android app, but just the iNat site itself via my PC.
So, every time you upload several photos, they get the iNat id-numbers NOT in the order of your selection. Just not.
For example, in my own case there were groups of approximately 30-50 photos each. They were perfectly sorted in my PC by the name of photo, img_3001 - img_3050, and all that.
But when I checked the observations after, I noticed, that iNat order does not coincide with the order of selected photos. They were ordered in generally from the first to the last, indeed, but in details the real iNat order turned out to be 3001, 3004, 3003, 3002, 3007, 3006, 3005, 3010,3009, 3008, 3014, 3013, 3012, 3011, and so on…
Seems that the system picks up each 3-4 photos in a row from the general amount, and registers them in the way-back order. Then next 3 or 4, and so on and so on, from the first selected photo to the last, but not each photo on its place.
So you’ll never get the same order as you select photos when uploading…
uploading via the website is a different beast. it’s probably best to start a separate discussion (or carve this out into a new thread) if you really want to get into the way observations and photos get ordered when uploading via the website.
I don’t understand. This is a real headache. The android app used to upload the photos in the order that I intentionally uploaded them. If I have 6 photos of a group of mushrooms, I need the underside photo of each mushroom to follow the cap photo of that mushroom. I can’t TAKE them in that order because I have to take a cap photo before pulling them up.
Having to use the “show first” on each photo, in reverse order of the order I want them in is a nightmare. I use iNaturalist because it’s more convenient than other fungi specific databases (like Mushroom Observer) but if I have to use a third party app to upload my photos, that’s defeating the purpose.
It didn’t used to be like this, so why on earth was it changed?
the previous discussion i noted above covers both the order of photos in the selection interface and the display order of the photos after selection.
for what it’s worth, after upload, if you don’t like the order of the photos, from the observation edit screen in the app, you can just hold and drag them around into the order you like.
