Specimen Gallery

An open-source, community-built collection of high-quality, transparent-background specimen images for scientific illustration, education, and creative projects.

🌐 Live: specimen.gallery

📖 Project Vision — Guiding principles and what we're building

Features

• Community uploads with automatic background removal (via Cloudinary)
• GBIF integration for taxonomic name validation
• Community ID verification — confirm or suggest identifications
• Clean licensing — CC0 (public domain) or CC-BY
• Quality moderation — auto-publish for verified names, review queue for uncertain IDs
• Trait tagging — sex, life stage, view angle, body part

Tech Stack

• Framework: Ruby on Rails 8.1
• Database: PostgreSQL
• Styling: Tailwind CSS
• Frontend: Hotwire (Turbo + Stimulus)
• File Storage: Active Storage (S3 in production)
• Background Removal: Cloudinary AI
• Taxonomy: GBIF Species API
• Hosting: Fly.io

Local Development

Prerequisites

• Ruby 3.3+
• PostgreSQL (or SQLite for simple local dev)
• Node.js (for Tailwind CSS builds)

Setup

# Clone the repo
git clone https://github.com/chispainnov/specimen-gallery.git
cd specimen-gallery

# Install dependencies
bundle install

# Set up database
bin/rails db:setup

# Copy environment template
cp .env.example .env
# Edit .env with your values (see below)

# Start development server
bin/dev

Visit http://localhost:3000

Environment Variables

See .env.example for all options. At minimum for local dev:

ADMIN_USERNAME=admin
ADMIN_PASSWORD=your_password
ADMIN_ROUTE_SECRET=your_secret

For background removal, you'll need Cloudinary credentials (free tier available).

Admin Access

Visit /your_route_secret/admin/specimen_assets to access the moderation queue.

Image Requirements

• Transparent background (PNG or WebP with alpha channel)
• Single specimen per image
• Minimum 512×512 pixels
• Clean isolation — no artifacts, halos, or background remnants
• Accurate colors — minimal post-processing

Licensing

Contributors choose their license:

• CC0 — Public domain, no attribution required
• CC-BY — Free to use, attribution required

By uploading, contributors confirm they hold rights to the image.

Contributing

We welcome contributions! See CONTRIBUTING.md for guidelines.

• Bug reports: Open an issue with steps to reproduce
• Features: Open an issue first to discuss
• Code: Small PRs preferred, follow Rails conventions

Security

Found a vulnerability? See SECURITY.md for responsible disclosure.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License — see LICENSE for details.

Note: The code is MIT licensed. Specimen images in the gallery are licensed individually by their contributors (CC0 or CC-BY).

Acknowledgments

• GBIF for taxonomic data
• Cloudinary for image processing
• All contributors who share their specimen images