Naturtag: an iNaturalist Image Tagger

A tool to browse and add iNaturalist taxonomy & observation metadata to local observation photos. This includes a command-line interface, a graphical interface, and can also be used as a python package.

Contents

• Use Cases
• Development Status
• Python Package
• CLI
  • Installation
  • Usage
  • Data Sources
  • Images
  • Keywords
  • DarwinCore
  • Sidecar Files
  • Hierarchical Keywords
  • Examples
• GUI
  • Installation
  • Usage
  • Image Selection and Tagging
  • Taxon Search
  • Saved Species
  • Metadata
  • Settings
  • Keyboard Shortcuts
• See Also

Use Cases

The purpose of this is to take some of the useful information from your own observations and embed it in your local photo collection.

Metadata for other biodiversity tools

This can improve interoperability with other tools and systems that interact with biodiversity data. For example, in addition to iNaturalist you may submit observations of certain species to another biodiversity observation platform with a more specific focus, such as eBird, BugGuide, or Mushroom Observer. For that use case, this tool supports Simple Darwin Core.

Metadata for photo hosting

This can also simplify tagging photos for photo hosting sites like Flickr. For that use case, this tool generates keywords in the same format as iNaturalist's Flickr Tagger.

Metadata for local organization

Finally, this can enable you to search and filter your local photo collection by type of organism like you can in the iNaturalist web UI or mobile apps. For that use case, a photo viewer or DAM that supports hierarchical keywords is recommended, such as Lightroom, FastPictureViewer, or XnViewMP.

Development Status

See Issues for planned features and current progress.

This is currently just an experimental hobby project, and not very polished. All the features described below are functional, however.

I plan to work on this long enough to prove whether or not the concept is useful as part of a naturalist/photographer/hobbyist's workflow; if so, there is a long list of features I'd like to continue adding onto this.

Python Package

See documentation on ReadTheDocs for details on the python package.

CLI

CLI Installation

This project depends on exiv2. Example install commands:

apt install exiv2   # Debian-based
dnf install exiv2   # Fedora-based
brew install exiv2  # MacOS

Then, install the python package:

pip install naturtag

Or, to install the latest development version:

pip install git+https://github.com/JWCook/naturtag.git

To run on python 3.7, you will also need the importlib-metadata backport:

pip install importlib-metadata

CLI Usage

This package provides the command naturtag, also aliased to nt.

Usage: naturtag [OPTIONS] [IMAGES]...

  Get taxonomy tags from an iNaturalist observation or taxon, and write them
  to local image metadata.

Options:
  -c, --common-names      Include common names for all ranks that have them
  -h, --hierarchical      Generate pipe-delimited hierarchical keywords
  -o, --observation TEXT  Observation ID or URL
  -t, --taxon TEXT        Taxon ID or URL
  -x, --create-xmp        Create XMP sidecar file if it doesn't already exist
  --help                  Show this message and exit.

Data Sources

Either a taxon or observation may be specified, either by ID or URL. For example, all of the following options will fetch the same taxonomy metadata:

-t 48978
-t https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/48978-Dirona-picta
-o 45524803
-o https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/45524803

The difference is that specifying a taxon (-t) will fetch only taxonomy metadata, while specifying an observation (-o) will fetch taxonomy plus observation metadata.

Images

Multiple paths are supported, as well as glob patterns, for example: 0001.jpg IMG*.jpg ~/observations/**.jpg If no images are specified, the generated keywords will be printed.

Keywords

Keywords will be generated in the format: taxonomy:{rank}={name}

DarwinCore

If an observation is specified, DwC metadata will also be generated, in the form of XMP tags. Among other things, this includes taxonomy tags in the format: dwc:{rank}="{name}"

Sidecar Files

By default, XMP tags will be written to a sidecar file if it already exists. Use the -x option to create a new one if it doesn't exist.

Hierarchical Keywords

If specified (-h), hierarchical keywords will be generated. These will be interpreted as a tree structure by image viewers that support them.

For example, the following keywords:

Animalia
Animalia|Arthropoda
Animalia|Arthropoda|Chelicerata
Animalia|Arthropoda|Hexapoda

Will translate into the following tree structure:

Animalia
    ┗━Arthropoda
        ┣━Chelicerata
        ┗━Hexapoda

Examples

Just generate keywords from a taxon, without writing to a file:

naturtag -ct 48978
Fetching taxon 48978
12 parent taxa found
22 keywords generated

taxonomy:kingdom=Animalia
taxonomy:phylum=Mollusca
taxonomy:class=Gastropoda
taxonomy:subclass=Heterobranchia
taxonomy:infraclass=Euthyneura
taxonomy:subterclass=Ringipleura
taxonomy:superorder=Nudipleura
taxonomy:order=Nudibranchia
taxonomy:suborder=Cladobranchia
taxonomy:superfamily=Proctonotoidea
taxonomy:family=Dironidae
taxonomy:genus=Dirona
"taxonomy:species=Dirona picta"
Animals
Molluscs
Gastropods
"Heterobranch Gastropods"
"Euthyneuran Gastropods"
"Nudipleuran Slugs"
Nudibranchs
"Colorful Dirona"
inat:taxon_id=48978

Generate both keywords and DarwinCore metadata for an observation, and write to two images and one XMP sidecar:

$ naturtag -co 45524803 img00001.jpg img00002.jpg
Fetching observation 45524803
Fetching taxon 48978
12 parent taxa found
23 keywords generated
Getting darwincore terms for observation 45524803
Writing 39 tags to img00001.jpg
Writing 37 tags to img00001.xmp
Writing 39 tags to img00002.jpg
No existing XMP sidecar file found for img00002.jpg; skipping

See example of XMP metadata generated by this command.

GUI

This project also includes a graphical frontend, although it very early in development.

GUI Installation

OS-specific builds will be coming soon, but for now running it requires a local python development environment. To install:

pip install naturtag[ui]

Some additional dependencies are required on Windows:

pip install naturtag[ui-win]

GUI Usage

Image Selection and Tagging

The basic UI components are shown below:

1. Drag & drop images or folders into the window.
2. Or, select files via the file browser on the right
3. Enter an iNaturalist observation ID or taxon ID
4. Click the 'Run' button in the lower-left to tag the selected images

Other things to do:

• Middle-click an image to remove it
• Right-click an image for a menu of more actions
• See Metadata for more details

Taxon Search

If you don't already know the taxon ID, click the 'Find a Species' button to go to the taxon search screen. You can start with searching by name, with autocompletion support:

You can also run a full search using the additional filters. For example, to search for plants and fungi with 'goose' in either the species or genus name:

Saved Species

The additional tabs on the taxon screen contain:

• History of recently viewed taxa
• Most frequently viewed taxa
• Starred taxa

To save a particular taxon for future reference, click the ✩ icon in the top left of its info panel, and it will be saved in the ★ tab. These items can be re-ordered via Right-click -> Move to top. (Unfortunately, drag-and-drop functionality is not currently possible for list items).

Metadata

Right-click an image and select Copy Flickr tags to copy keyword tags compatible with Flickr.

Also, a very simple (and ugly) metadata view is included, mainly for debugging purposes. To open it, Right-click an image and select View metadata.

Settings

There are also some settings to customize the metadata that your images will be tagged with, as well as iNaturalist info used in search filters. And yes, there is a dark mode, because why not.

See CLI Usage for more details on these settings.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Some keyboard shortcuts are included for convenience:

Key(s)	Action	Screen
F11	Toggle fullscreen	All
Ctrl+O	Open file chooser	Image selection
Shift+Ctrl+O	Open file chooser (dirs)	Image selection
Ctrl+Enter	Run image tagger	Image selection
Ctrl+Enter	Run taxon search	Taxon search
Shift+Ctrl+X	Clear selected images	Image selection
Shift+Ctrl+X	Clear search filters	Taxon search
Ctrl+S	Open settings screen	All
Ctrl+Backspace	Return to main screen	All
Ctrl+Q	Quit	All

See Also

• For generating keyword collections, see the related tool taxon-keyword-gen.
• This project uses pyinaturalist, a python API client for iNaturalist. Refer to that project for more data access tools.