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Archive for the 'geotagging' Category

Geotagging Photos With GPSed

Published at April 30, 2008 in GPS and geotagging. 3 Comments


In the comments to my post on GeoSetter, someone suggested I take a look at GPSed Photo Take’n'Pin as an option for geotagging photos. GPSed itself is a service for uploading and sharing GPS track and point data. From the website’s FAQ:

GPSed, a location-based and geotagging service, is designed to enable real-time tracking from mobile devices and collecting track data in an online archive.
The service is designated for hikers, bikers, drivers, tourists, adventure travelers, sportsmen, photographers and GPS/GIS professionals working in various industries such as forestry, fishery, transportation and others. GPSed can also be used just for having fun.

GPSed Photo Take’n'Pin is their free application designed to use GPS track data to geotag photos. Gave it a spin, and wasn’t terribly impressed:

  • You apparently can’t use a local GPX track file on your computer to geotag the photos, only one that you’ve already upload to the GPSed website. Since you likely already have that track on your computer, there’s no reason not to use a better geotagging program that supports local GPX files like GeoSetter. By way of contrast, the similar service locr provides a free application that does let you use your own GPS data to geotag your photos.
  • I say “apparently” above because I couldn’t get the program to geotag my standard test photoset even with an online track, and there’s no help file in either the program or the website to help me sort out what the problem might be.
  • Even if I could successfully geotag a photo with the GPSed Take’n'Pin application, there’s nothing I can do with it on the GPSed website. You can take the photos and export them to Google Earth, Picasa, or Flickr, but you don’t need this program to do that. With locr, you can upload the photo to the website and share it and its location with others.
  • The program crashed on me several times (I’ll cut it some slack on that, since it’s labeled as a beta).

Given those issues, I’ll stick with my previous statement that GeoSetter is the best geotagging application I’ve seen to date, with GPicSync a worthy alternative. Even if GPSed Photo Take’n'Pin worked as advertised, it doesn’t offer any features to make it worthwhile.



Prune Updated: Now With Automated Photo Geotagging For Windows, Mac, And Linux

Published at February 25, 2008 in GPS, GPX and geotagging. 0 Comments


Prune is a Java-based GPS-track viewing and editing program that runs in Windows, Mac and Linux. When I last posted about it, the photo geotagging capability was a bit awkward - it required you to manually link a photo to a trackpoint, not automatically correlating trackpoints with photos based on time like most photo geotagging software. Version 4.1 is now out, and it now can automatically correlate and tag photos with data from a GPX track file. You need to have EXIFTool installed on your system; for Windows, put it the same folder as Prune, or into a system folder. Open a GPX track with File => Open Command, select either individual photos or an entire folder with File => Add Photos (or Photo => Add Photos). Select the photos you want to geotag in the file list at left, then select Photo => Correlate All Photos:

geotag photos with Java Prune

Prune lets you adjust for the time difference between the camera time and the GPS time (the former is usually the local time, the latter UTC). You can also set the correlation limits, i.e. how close the time or distance a trackpoint needs to be in order to be correlated with a picture. After correlating photos with track, you still have to select Photo => Save to EXIF to have the position data written into the picture’s data:

Save to EXIF

If you leave “Overwrite file” unchecked, the original will be saved with “_original” appended to the file extension; it would probably make more sense to append it to the filename instead, but that’s apparently a limitation of EXIFTool.

Another useful new feature in Prune is the ability to create a GPX file from an imported set of geotagged photos. Add the photos to the file list with the Photo => Add Photo command, select File => Export GPX, and Prune will create a GPX track file, connecting all the points where a photo was taken in the correct order.

Other new features in Prune:

  • Automatic correlation of photos with points based on timestamps
  • Manual disconnection of photos from points
  • Reading of photo thumbnails from EXIF data (speeds up photo loading)
  • KML and KMZ export now includes altitude option for airborne tracks
  • Track points in map can be connected by lines
  • On loading a text file, fields are now guessed according to data or column headings
  • Polish language

Prune is released under GPL, and there’s a copy of the source code available for download. Not sure I would use Prune instead of GeoSetter for photo geotagging in Windows, but it looks like a great free alternative for Mac and Linux users, who have fewer free geotagging options.



Cheap Digital Camera With Built-In GPS

Published at January 29, 2008 in GPS and geotagging. 0 Comments


Looking for a new digital camera (as I am)? You might want to hold off until the new GE models come out this spring. The model E1050 comes with an astonishing list of standard features for a retail price of only $250 (actual street price will likely be even less):

  • Built-in GPS receiver for automatic photo geotagging
  • 10 MP sensor
  • 5x optical zoom
  • Up to 3200 ISO
  • 3-inch LCD touchscreen display
  • Ability to shoot HD video (720p)
  • Built-in panorama stitching

Hope it takes good pictures ;-).

Via GPS Lodge.

Addendum: GPS yes, but apparently not a standard GPS receiver built in. The Map Room has more info.



Stamping Geotagged Photos With XMP Location And Coordinates

Published at January 28, 2008 in GPS and geotagging. 0 Comments

I posted earlier on GPStamper, a handy free utility that takes a geotagged photo and prints the coordinates and time it was taken at on the bottom of the image, saving a copy of it losslessly (no degradation of the original JPG image), leaving the original image untouched. Mike Lee, the author of GPStamper, writes to say that he’s upgraded the program with a few new features:

Continue reading ‘Stamping Geotagged Photos With XMP Location And Coordinates’



Modifying EXIF Headers (Including Geocoding) With TagMyJPGs

Published at December 10, 2007 in Google Maps and geotagging. 0 Comments

Yet another photo geotagging application, TagMyJPGs (aka EXIF Geotagging), this one with some helpful EXIF editing capabilities, and a nice Google Maps interface for geotagging. If you’re running Internet Explorer, the website has a link that lets you install the software automatically; otherwise, download and unzip the program into its own directory, then run the EXIFGeotagging.exe application:

Pictures

TagMyJPGs lets you view much of the EXIF data embedded in the photo, and you can add/edit EXIF tags like the name, description, photographer, keywords, etc.(but not basic photo info like exposure, aperture, etc.). Tags in white or yellow are usually editable, those in gray not. Click on the Geo-Tags tab, and you can manually enter the coordinates where the photo was taken:

geotags

Click on the Geo-Tag with Google Maps button, and a Google Maps interface will open up with a marker indicating the camera position:

TagMyJPGS

Click and drag the marker on Google Maps until it corresponds to the position of the camera when the photo was taken. You can also click on the object being photographed, and TagMyJPGs will mark the distance between camera and object with a yellow line, and enter the distance and bearing into the boxes at the top. The website claims that it will also draw the camera’s field of view, but I haven’t seen that in the several cases I tried. If the photo was already geotagged, it will be displayed at its geocoded position. Click “Copy Geo-Tag in EXIF Data”, and you’ll return back to the main program with the camera and object locations entered into the appropriate boxes.

If you’re satisfied, press the “save image and store EXIF data” button to write the coordinates and other entered data into the photo’s EXIF header. If the “preceed (sic) image name with datestamp” box is checked, the program will create a new image file with the date as a prefix to the original filename. If it’s not checked, it will overwrite the original with the new version.

The biggest drawback is the inability to geotag photos with a GPS track, but the author indicates on the website that he’s planning to add that feature in the future.



Geographic Photo Albums With Picopolo

Published at September 15, 2007 in geotagging. 0 Comments

Here’s a post I’ve decided to bury on the weekend :). Picopolo is a free photo album program that supposedly lets you also geotag photos, and organize them by geographic area, route, activity, etc.. I say supposedly because I can’t figure the program out:

  • It’s originally written in German, and while there’s a English version available, there’s still a lot of German mixed into the program installation and operation
  • The entire help file is still in German, which is a problem because …
  • … program operation is not intuitive, to put it mildly. Icons don’t make sense, section operation names are obtuse, the layout and structure don’t make a lot of sense. Even the minimize/maximize/close program icons have been changed from the Windows standard for no good reason.
  • There’s a “Quick Reference” section in English when the program starts up which gives you some hope. But that hope is soon dashed - it gives very little useful information about what the program does, and how to perform basic tasks.

Maybe someone else might find something useful in this program (especially if you can read German), so have at it if you like, and let me know what you think. But there are easier options for handling photos on a geographic basis, like LOCR or even Picasa.



Labeling Geotagged Photos With Coordinates and Time

Published at August 29, 2007 in geotagging. 0 Comments

Geotagging a photo embeds geographic coordinates into the EXIF header, where it joins other information like the date and time the photo was taken. In a sense, Mike Lee’s GPStamper program does the opposite: it extracts the geographic coordinates from a geotagged photo, and makes a lossless copy of the photo with the geographic coordinates (and optionally the date and time) printed in yellow in the lower-right-hand corner of the photo.

Download GPStamper here, and install the program. You’ll also need to download EXIFTool for Windows, change the name of the exiftool(-k).exe file to exiftool.exe, and put it into the GPStamper program directory. Run the program:

GPStamper

Step 1 is to press the “Folder” button, and select a folder with geocoded photos in it. Then click on “PREPARE”, and the program will “prep” the EXIF header of the image files for stamping. Images are backed up automatically as a precaution; the backup has “_original” appended to the .JPG file extension, e.g. the original file “picture.jpg” will now be named “picture.jpg_original”.

Step 2, press the “File” button to select a photo to label with the coordinates, coordinates /date, or coordinates/date/time, depending on which of the options are chosen at the right. GPStamper doesn’t do batch labeling - you have to do one picture file at a time. When you press the “STAMP” button, GPStamper takes the JPG file and labels it as specified, leaving the rest of the image untouched and undegraded. It then saves the labeled photo with “-gps” appended to the filename, leaving the original as-is. So, for example, the original geocoded picture below, DSC00030.jpg …

DSC00030

… is labeled with coordinates/date/time in the lower right-hand corner, and saved as DSC00030-gps.jpg …

DSC00030-gps

… but with the quality of the original image unaffected.

Mike has made the user interface as simple as possible, but welcomes user feedback on both the interface and the features. He also has a number of other useful image tools on his Lossless JPEG Toolbox website.

Edited 8/28/07 to indicate change in program: backing up original image files was originally an option, but is now done automatically by default.



Prune - Java-Based GPS Track Visualization And Photo GeoTagging

Published at August 15, 2007 in GPS, GPX, KML and geotagging. 0 Comments

Prune is another Java-based GPS tool with its own unique set of features, including:

- Load multiple text, GPX or KML tracks, appending them to each other

- Trim duplicate points, and compress the track (hence the name Prune)

- Save combined tracks in text or KML format (use GPS TrackMaker to convert the KML tracks to GPX format if desired)

- See a plot of position, and altitude if available

Continue reading ‘Prune - Java-Based GPS Track Visualization And Photo GeoTagging’



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