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.
Great point about the transparency grid for image search SEO. Hadn't thought about that... Might add checkerboard thumbnails for search engines while keeping the downloads as pure transparent PNGs. Thanks!
These look very nice thanks, hope it can be expanded. Interesting I wonder how does web devs handle transparency? There must be a better way than pngs.
Thanks! Yeah, expanding the collection is the priority right now.
Re: transparency - PNGs are still the most universally supported. WebP has better compression but inconsistent support in design tools (Photoshop, Figma, etc.). SVGs don't work for photographic specimens.
Could potentially offer WebP alongside PNG for modern browsers, but PNG is the safe default for now.
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.
Really appreciate this detailed feedback. These are the types of features that would make the platform more robust long-term.
Re: tagging/metadata - You're right that additional fields like sex, age, life stage would be valuable. Right now keeping it simple to reduce upload friction, but could definitely add optional metadata fields as the collection grows.
Re: user accounts - Good point about verification and editing rights. Currently everything is anonymous/CC0, but user accounts would enable better provenance tracking and let uploaders manage their own submissions. Thinking about how to add this without adding too much complexity to the upload flow.
Re: normalized taxonomy - Already using GBIF's taxonomy API for species names (auto-suggest on upload), so names are normalized to their database. Common names are free text for now since they vary regionally. Could potentially pull those from GBIF as well.
This is pretty helpful. Gives me a clear roadmap for v2 features. Trying to balance simplicity (to encourage contributions) with the kind of rich metadata that makes the collection more useful. Open to thoughts on how to strike that balance. Thanks!
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.
Right, exactly. Good eye. Yeah well the tool that does the PNG transformation is far from perfect. Sometimes it cuts an image cleanly and other times not so much (open to improving this function).
Also a source/url would be a solid addition as well, even if the image is under a CC0 license. Appreciate your feedback.
Like the idea, but having just the skull of a white-tailed deer is sad and doesn't seem practical for illustrating an animal. I suppose a service like this requires constant curation to maintain quality, the larger the dataset and more it gets popular.
Fair point. Right now the collection is small and somewhat random as I'm seeding it. The goal is to have multiple views/life stages for popular species over time, not just skulls or single angles.
Quality curation is definitely a challenge as it scales. The community verification system helps, but you're right that it requires active moderation. Thinking about how to balance growth with quality. Open to suggestions.
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?
Bonus points for pngs SEO-optimized for image searches with "transparent" that have a fake opaque grid on them
Great point about the transparency grid for image search SEO. Hadn't thought about that... Might add checkerboard thumbnails for search engines while keeping the downloads as pure transparent PNGs. Thanks!
These look very nice thanks, hope it can be expanded. Interesting I wonder how does web devs handle transparency? There must be a better way than pngs.
Thanks! Yeah, expanding the collection is the priority right now.
Re: transparency - PNGs are still the most universally supported. WebP has better compression but inconsistent support in design tools (Photoshop, Figma, etc.). SVGs don't work for photographic specimens.
Could potentially offer WebP alongside PNG for modern browsers, but PNG is the safe default for now.
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.
Really appreciate this detailed feedback. These are the types of features that would make the platform more robust long-term.
Re: tagging/metadata - You're right that additional fields like sex, age, life stage would be valuable. Right now keeping it simple to reduce upload friction, but could definitely add optional metadata fields as the collection grows.
Re: user accounts - Good point about verification and editing rights. Currently everything is anonymous/CC0, but user accounts would enable better provenance tracking and let uploaders manage their own submissions. Thinking about how to add this without adding too much complexity to the upload flow.
Re: normalized taxonomy - Already using GBIF's taxonomy API for species names (auto-suggest on upload), so names are normalized to their database. Common names are free text for now since they vary regionally. Could potentially pull those from GBIF as well.
This is pretty helpful. Gives me a clear roadmap for v2 features. Trying to balance simplicity (to encourage contributions) with the kind of rich metadata that makes the collection more useful. Open to thoughts on how to strike that balance. Thanks!
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
Right, exactly. Good eye. Yeah well the tool that does the PNG transformation is far from perfect. Sometimes it cuts an image cleanly and other times not so much (open to improving this function).
Also a source/url would be a solid addition as well, even if the image is under a CC0 license. Appreciate your feedback.
Like the idea, but having just the skull of a white-tailed deer is sad and doesn't seem practical for illustrating an animal. I suppose a service like this requires constant curation to maintain quality, the larger the dataset and more it gets popular.
Fair point. Right now the collection is small and somewhat random as I'm seeding it. The goal is to have multiple views/life stages for popular species over time, not just skulls or single angles.
Quality curation is definitely a challenge as it scales. The community verification system helps, but you're right that it requires active moderation. Thinking about how to balance growth with quality. Open to suggestions.
You probably already know, but iNaturalist allows you to filter by CC0 licensed observations.
Yes. Thanks for the feedback. One of the main goals of Specimen Gallery is to expand the index and internet library of natural specimen PNGs.