Upload images

Guide to using the "Surveys" page

Images are uploaded to a given survey and must be organised by folder in your local computer or hard drive, where a folder represents a survey.

Three-minute video tutorial on how to add and manage survey images.

There are two ways to upload images: 1) One survey at a time and 2) Bulk Import.

Process for uploading your images survey-by-survey. Image files from each survey must be stored in a separate folder on your computer.

Upload images one survey at a time.

1. Go to the Surveys page.

2. Click on the "Actions" tab from the survey you want to upload the images to, then "Images". A pop-up will appear with any existing images you've uploaded for this survey.

3. Click on the blue "Add Images" button in the top right of the pop-up window, and navigate to the folder on your computer that contains the corresponding survey images.

4. Click "Upload".

Follow the Upload Instructions to bulk upload surveys including photos, and historic annotation points if you have them.

Bulk upload for multiple surveys.

1. Click on the blue "Bulk Import" button on the top right-hand side of the "Surveys" page.

2. “Download Survey Template” to get an Excel Spreadsheet template that already lists your sites under the second Reference_Sheet tab. The main sheet will allow you to select the sites for each survey from the Reference Sheet.

   NOTE: You must have created Sites prior to importing images

3. Fill in the downloaded SurveyImportTemplate.xlsx, where each row represents a survey and a folder of images in your local hard drive (this also includes USB sticks, memory cards or external hard drives). Here are important notes to consider:

   1. Survey Site: contains a dropdown selection for the sites in your project. The spreadsheet will not allow you to enter new sites. If you need to include new sites, go back to the Sites page create the sites (as above) and download the template again.

   2. Start Date Time: is the date of collection and should be entered as dd/MMM/yyyy. If time is important to capture, this field allows time entered as HH:mm:ss in 12h or 24h format (e.g., 01/Jan/2024 00:00:00).

   3. Title [Optional]: This can help to identify a specific survey

   4. Description [optional]: This field allows you to add notes about the survey

   5. Survey Collection Method: Dropdown selection of the methods defined in your project.

   6. Survey Image Directory: This is the name of the folder or location of a subfolder that contains the images for a particular survey (not the full name of the directory)

   7. Transect Number: If your survey involves multiple transects within a site, this field helps distinguish between them.

   8. Depth [Optional]: This field records the depth at which the survey was conducted, in meters.

   9. Once completed, it's important to save the file as "surveys.xlsx" inside the folder that contains all the other folders of image data, as listed in the "Survey Image Directory" column in your surveys.xlsx file. For example, if you are uploading all the surveys in 2019 for your monitoring in Koror Island, Fiji, your images will be organised within a master folder: C:\\Fiji_monitoring\Koror_Island\2019. Within this master folder, you will have individual folders for each survey or row in the table. The Survey spreadsheet should saved be in the root directory (C:\\Fiji_monitoring\Koror_Island\2019). ReefCloud will upload all your images within this directory and organise them according to the information in this sheet.

4. After completing the steps above, go back to ReefCloud and click on Choose Folder. This is the master folder containing all your images organised into folders as per the survey spreadsheet, as well as the surveys.xlsx spreadsheet with all the information for each survey and folder to link to.

   1. NOTE: if you want to import historic point annotations (e.g. from another program such as CoralNet) this MUST be done at the same time as your survey bulk upload. You will need to create a second "points.xlsx" file and save it in the same location as the surveys.xlsx file. The points.xlsx file should have four columns:

      1. Point Image Path: this is the image file name and location inside the directory, so that ReefCloud can link the annotated points to the correct photo as it's uploaded.

      2. Point X Coord: x coordinate for the pixel location of the annotation point (dependent on photo size), usually available from previous annotation software.

      3. Point Y Coord: y coordinate for the pixel location of the annotation point.

      4. Point Annotation: the label code associated with the annotation point. This MUST match one of the "Codes" in your designated label set.

5. ReefCloud will review the folder and provide a summary of the data that will be uploaded. Review and click “Next”.

6. You will be presented with a table summarising the number of images that will be uploaded to each survey. Review and click “Upload Surveys” to commence the upload.

Summary of point coordinates within images and how this relates to the points.xlsx file

Note: ReefCloud has been designed to accommodate variable internet speeds. You can select the speed that best suits your current bandwidth. Should internet drop during the download, ReefCloud will remember where it dropped and resume the upload automatically. This way you do not need to worry if you leave the upload running overnight.