Metadata missing from photos uploaded on SMART mobile app

SMART Community Forum
1

Hi,

Is there a way that the photograph taken through SMART and uploaded from the mobile phone to the app keep their metadata?

Whenever I get back an image from SMART desktop, there is no metadata on the image anymore. This would allow me to check the date & time of sightings compared to what was submitted.

Thanks,

Marine

2

Hi Marine,

We currently remove the metadata when the image is resized. The idea is that the metadata from the observation (location + timestamp) is already in the sighting data.

Are you experiencing mismatches of some kind?

Cheers,
-Justin

3

Hi Justin,

Some citizen scientists log the sighting when back home/back at the lodge and sometimes they forget to add the time/date in the comment section. I don’t want to make it an extra mandatory field because some people do log the sighting when they see the leopard and therefore I don’t want them to have to enter the information.

If I had access to the metadata I could make sure of the time & date.

Thanks

4

Sounds good, we can add this feature to the backlog.

1 Like
5

@justinsteventon I dont know how/if this relates to a development requested for SMART Desktop regarding metadata of pictures once they are downloaded from the conservation area…

6

I think it might be a separate thing. Marine is saying that people take pictures and add data at a different time and she wants to make sure the events are synced.

7

Thank you Justin, appreciate your help!

8

Hi Justin,

Would you be able to let me know when the meta data feature will be added please?

Thanks

9

Hi Marine,

We will discuss this in an upcoming mobile task force call. I am guessing SMART 8, but since this is a Mobile only change, it could easily be sooner.

Cheers,
-Justin

10

@Marine , the latest version of SMART Mobile (build 478) will preserve the image metadata on images selected from the device. This is the latest version on the Android and Apple stores.

Cheers,
-Justin

11

Hi Justin,

That is a fantastic news, thank you so much!

12

Hi Justin,

I got the SMART connect upgrade last week and thought that it would have an impact on keeping the metadata but I just did a test now by logging a sighting on SMART mobile (build 478) and when I withdrawed the data on SMART desktop, the metadata from the image did not appear.

Is there something else I should be doing?

Thanks

13

What format was the image in?

14

After I save the image from SMART desktop, it’s normally in jpg format.

All the images uploaded on SMART by the citizen scientists are in jpg or png.

15

I see that SMART Desktop may be removing the Exif data. I am following up, stay tuned.

1 Like
16

Hi there,
Justin pointed out this issue to us recently and we were able to fix it in our development code now. It should be ready for public use upon next release. We plan to do a small update release (7.5.8) around Jan of the new year, so the metadata issue should be fixed from start to finish of the workflow at that point hopefully!

2 Likes
17

Hi @jeffloun ,

Is there a date plan in Jan still for the small update release that will allow to have metadata kept on the image files please?

Thanks!

18

This week we will deliver it to the Smart Partnership for their testing. Shouldn’t be too long after that for public release.

1 Like