I like to download photos to my desktop from Google Photos after I’ve been out at a location for the day and need to upload a bunch of stuff. Every so often, iNat doesn’t get the location data from the photo (even though it’s there). After they’ve been uploaded I need to manually plot them, but I need to find the location on the map. It would be much easier to just be able to select a pinned location, which I can easily do during upload.
The photos seem to get through the “no location check” on upload because I’m manually entering the pinned location name. This way, I can keep the exact coordinates, but have a descriptive locality. It’s only after upload that I see there were no GPS points.
Not sure if you’ve noticed this, but if you upload several photos at a time to edit for submission, and then hit the “location” field for one that’s missing a location, the location of the others that you’ve uploaded are shown on the map. So if they were all close together it’s easy to choose a location for the blank one. If you were processing your submissions one at a time, you won’t get this.
If you have a photo that has GPS data embedded in it that the uploader cannot read, please send the original photo (with all its metatdata) to help@inaturalist.org so we can take a look.
Yes, and that’s a great time-saver! Especially when you want repeat observations at a very precise location. I use it a lot.
Is there any chance such a feature, or at least the ability to “pick up” the already Pinned locations, might become available in the future for already-uploaded observations? eg when they proved to have inaccurate data and need “re-locating”, or when one was accidentally uploaded without GPS data.
@janetwright Yes that’s a great video. I found all those things out eventually not long after I joined last year, but as per this Feature request, the pinning would be a great feature to have for already-uploaded observations.
Probably not until the entire batch edit function is revamped. In the meantime you can use the current batch edit function to add the same location to multiple existing observations. Click on your profile pic in the upper right-hand side of the page and select “Edit Observations”. You’ll see a Batch Edit button on that page.
Thanks tiwane. I use Batch Edit, it just takes a few extra steps to find the co-ords for the pin I need but we can’t have everything - and we have a lot:)
I realize I could have created a pin for a common location for some observations. I don’t see a way to go back to a created observation and change the location mark with a Pinned Location name which could be used again. Is that feature available only during the observation creation process?
@glenbug I moved your question to the existing feature request for this functionality. As you will see, the answer to your question is yes, it’s currently only available during the upload process. Currently pinned locations can’t be accessed while editing a previously created observation (except in the Android App). But the request for that is here and will be considered by staff when the observation edit page is next re-done.
Just in case this is useful for anyone: in the Android app it is possible to select a pinned location when updating an already uploaded observation.
That doesn’t of course help with the lack of this option on the website, but I’ve used it as a workaround occasionally when I’ve forgotten to choose the pinned location I use to obscure observations at my residence.