Is there a policy on heavily-retouched photos? Half of the images of the white-lipped island pitviper look real and depict the snake as either green or yellow.
The other half are copyrighted and depict it as bright blue. They look like a giant decal you’d see on the hood of a Chevy Camaro. I am curious about whether the snake actually is blue, but I have my doubts.
There are some existing threads on the forum that may have good info on this topic:
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/heavily-editing-photos-in-unnatural-ways/58751
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/visually-retouching-images/45206
https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/use-of-ai-upscaling/52724
Thanks!
I don’t think the photos you reference are photoshopped in the manner you describe. The snake appears to have several color variations.
Yes they can be pretty bright blue, it seems especially common in certain areas like the Komodo islands
Trimeresurus insularis are able to be blue, those photos are not Photoshopped - or not enough to be untrue to the appearance of the snake.
The most common unrealistic colour ‘editing’ results you see are unintentional and come from mobile phones, and many auto shoot modes on cameras, and their default, built-in enhancer algorithms.
Pumped-up, saturated colour is more engaging to viewers and in some cases can aid in an ID, but for the most part, it can really distort the reality of the observations.
That color is amazing, and I’m glad to learn it occurs in nature. But the background of the pictures here looks like it’s been altered, and the scales look extremely smooth and uniform. The picture looks like a much more polished production than most of those that depict green and yellow snakes. But I’d be happy to be wrong!
[linke removed by staff]
I removed a link from the above post. I know there was no malicious intent but please don’t link to specific observations in a way that may bring negative scrutiny to the observer’s actions. I’d suggest just adding a comment to the observation itself.
I think it’s sort of on a spectrum, and one should judge on whether the evidence provided is an accurate depiction of the organism/scene.
Fair enough!
I think sometimes there’s a conflict of interest with wildlife photographers. I know many INat users are also professional photographers in the way that they sell their prints, so I do understand that many folks upload their finalized, edited photos to INat. I do think there’s a line, though. Generally, I think that if the editing compromises the integrity of the observation in the way that it makes the observation less valuable from a scientific perspective (i.e., making the background indecipherable or changing the animal’s color completely), it’s crossing that line. For me, I usually upload my pre-editing photos to INat just because I use the same computer for photoshop and Inaturalist. Even so, I never edit my photos beyond adjusting values/colors for clarity and visibility, and sometimes slightly blurring the background to make the subject stand out more. There’s nothing wrong with artsy nature photos, but the point of a site like INat is to provide a scientific database of information. If you can’t see anything other that the animal’s face or the picture looks to heavily edited to be real, that information isn’t useful. You can definitely be both a serious naturalist and an artsy photo person, I just think it’s important to know when is the right time for the latter.
I think what might be throwing you off with some of the more professional-looking photos of this species (just browsing through them) is that they seem to have been taken in low-light conditions with flash. That’s what’s producing the look where the subject is isolated on a black background.
There is actually a project for the color variation on this snake. If you search on the name, the project comes up.
Lots of pit vipers do come in bright, almost fake-like colors. Like the Malabar pit viper of India. But at the same time, I understand your concern. Five seconds of googling images of blue snakes reveals a lot of fake or Ai generated stuff. It’s pretty hard to know it things like this are real or not.
Indeed. I come to Inaturalist to learn about nature. Photoshopped pictures on the platform don’t help. IMO!