A way to edit/improve tags for existing images would be useful. For example, the duck images could use a "Sex" tag.

And probably some kind of uploader account would be a good idea as well. So if somebody contacts you about an image they uploaded, you can verify if they were the original uploader. And you could give a user more rights related to editing metadata for images they uploaded.

Maybe the species + common name could be normalized instead of being free text fields. Especially if you find an existing database of species names.

I kept running into the same problem: needing transparent PNGs of organisms (animals, plants, fungi) for design/education projects, but everything was either paywalled, had messy licensing, or required manual background removal.

Existing solutions: - Stock sites: $$$, restrictive licenses - Wikimedia Commons: mixed licensing, photos have backgrounds - PhyloPic: silhouettes only, not full specimens - iNaturalist: photos with backgrounds, not cutouts

So I built specimen.gallery – a searchable library of transparent specimen PNGs, all CC0 (public domain). Organized by scientific taxonomy. No accounts, no attribution required, just download and use.

Stack: Rails 8 + Postgres + Fly.io. Server-rendered, no React/Next.js, just clean HTML. Using Cloudinary for auto background removal. MIT licensed.

Current status: ~90 specimens, growing daily. Looking for contributors and feedback.

Why PNGs specifically? They're the only widely-supported format with proper alpha transparency. SVGs don't work for photographic specimens. WebP support is still inconsistent.

Code: https://github.com/chispainnov/specimen-gallery Site: https://specimen.gallery

Open to technical feedback – what would make this more useful/valuable?

Should bee wings be transparent? (Let the perfect be the enemy of good) You should have a source/url on the upload form of the image already exists somewhere.

https://specimen.gallery/taxa/43