With the older iPhoto app on my Mac, I can drag and drop photos directly from the app to the Upload page on iNaturalist, but there is a downside to that pathway since the Uploader does not properly parse species names from the files. See this discussion about the failure to parse species names properly from iPhoto. (I have an older Mac and still use the older app.) To allow the Uploader to properly parse the species names from my photo filenames, I have to go through the same intermediate step that you describe. I make sure I export using the “title” of the images rather than the original filename and, of course, I make sure it exports location information, etc. (options available at Export).
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