Decided to give Seek a try on a day I felt like spending 2 hours to identify 45 species of plants around the neighborhood. Was impressed with all of the taxonomy crammed into its offline AI. Came home to connect to Internet and upload observations to iNaturalist, only to discover that Seek wiped geotags from all of the photos. Don’t feel like using Seek ever again if that’s not fixed. Bummer. Can’t decide if this constitutes a bug report, a feature request or if I’m just doing something wrong. Please advise.

Thank you for the reference. So, erm, 5 years later it’s still unresolved and now also creeped into the Android app? And the only reason cited is that EXIF metadata writing isn’t implemented in Seek…? But I can see that camera settings metadata is embedded into the files, so the app does have the capability to write EXIF metadata. Yet the developers deliberately intend for me to go through the rigamarole of capturing shots with another camera app and then importing them into Seek, even though the Seek app already tracks GPS…? That’s the intended way of use now if I want the GPS data to not be scrubbed…? Wanna make extra sure I’m not missing a setting or something sensible unlike that route.

did you grant Seek precise location access permissions?

Yes…? [Screenshot_20240613-174310_Permission controller] I think this is the permission.

The linked thread does say Seek was never intended to be used with iNat, and frankly I don’t use it at all. It somehow manages to make my slow, difficult phone camera even laggier and more blurry. I just use my camera, share to iNat and cut to the chase. Seek might be fun in the field with the kids as a standalone activity, but it’s an obstacle to interacting with iNaturalist. I don’t know that it’s a priority to make it be otherwise.

Well, okay, let me highlight the benefits of Seek as I see them. As someone who doesn’t connect to the Internet outside of home, I find offline identification at a glance to be rather useful. It also helps with checking if a plant I find is a new species or a duplicate of one I already observed before but looking different for whatever reason. And the dynamic mode of the Seek camera helps align the shots in a way that allows more confident identification from the resulting photo, which I, as an amateur naturalist, might not always have the best sense for. I take it that if the AI is able to identify the species from a certain angle — it’s probably a projection that includes all the important visual traits. Correct me if I’m wrong, but that whole dynamic AI camera isn’t part of iNaturalist app, right…?

I have always assumed that Seek was INTENDED for children. That it does not keep much data is intended for that reason. It’s nice that parents and teachers can safely introduce children to nature and the beginning of learning identification, without concern of tracing the children’s whereabouts. It can be a scary world. I use only my iPhone for photos and iNat. I don’t have internet at home. All my “computer work” IS from iPhone. I use Seek for a quick id, but I have found that using my clip on lens with the Seek app can really help the closeups…

[image] Erquint: So, erm, 5 years later it’s still unresolved and now also creeped into the Android app? i went back and reread the post i referenced before and did some testing on my phone, and i think the way to interpret the post is that since version 2 of Seek, neither iOS nor Android Seek would store location in EXIF. [image] Erquint: Correct me if I’m wrong, but that whole dynamic AI camera isn’t part of iNaturalist app, right…? i haven’t tried the version of the iNat app that’s under development, but based on the code and the comments that I’ve seen from folks who have used the app, there should be some sort of camera mode that i assume is similar to what Seek does. it sounds like that app is being beta tested now. so i would expect that to be available within a year, assuming no big surprises found during testing. it’s unclear whether the new version of this camera would capture location in the image file EXIF though. if you wanted to test it out, you could look at the GitHub repo for the iNaturalist React App, and install it yourself.

Ah, that would probably explain this… [image]Why do Android app users make relatively so many more casual observations than other users? I follow a couple of my former professors who regularly use Seek and have it set to automatically upload observations to iNaturalist. Most of their observations end up Casual for one reason or another because some of the metadata doesn’t get imported properly

i don’t think so. after you take a photo in Seek, if you click the button to post to iNaturalist and your location services are on, then you will get a location on the iNaturalist observation. however, if your location services are off, then you get no location and have to select one from the map.

Seek wipes geotags :(

General

pisum June 13, 2024, 1:07pm 2

see https://forum.inaturalist.org/t/importing-photo-from-seek-to-inaturalist-doesnt-have-location/1925/9

Topic		Replies	Views
Importing photo from Seek to iNaturalist doesn't have location Bug Reports seek	14	5537	May 10, 2019
Seek - new functionality lets users post to iNaturalist News and Updates seek	19	9023	October 29, 2019
Real-time Computer Vision predictions in Seek by iNaturalist 2.0 News and Updates seek	34	8079	July 1, 2020
Seek grabs current location if photo lacks geolocation Bug Reports geoprivacy , seek	8	1710	May 23, 2021
Android removes location from photo taken with Seek Bug Reports seek	2	366	November 9, 2023

Seek wipes geotags :(

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