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Modifying EXIF Headers (Including Geocoding) With TagMyJPGs

Published by
Leszek Pawlowicz
 in geotagging and Google Maps. Closed

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.




Labeling Geotagged Photos With Coordinates and Time

Published by
Leszek Pawlowicz
 in geotagging. Closed

4/26/09: GPStamper is now a commercial program; there’s a trial version that runs for 30 days, and free versions are available for non-commercial scientific work and surveys.

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 by
Leszek Pawlowicz
 in geotagging, GPS, GPX and KML. Closed

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’




Photo GeoTagging IV – GPicSync

Published by
Leszek Pawlowicz
 in geotagging, Google Earth, Google Maps, GPS, GPX and KML. 2 Comments

The last photo geotagging application I’ll cover for now is GPicSync, freeware from Francois Schnell. This application doesn’t have as fancy an interface as PhotoMapper, locr or Location Stamper, but it has some useful, and unique, features:

  • It just works, cleanly and neatly. Set the locations for picture folder and the GPS file (GPX or NMEA), set the correct time offset between local time and UTC (aka GMT), and click the Synchronize button to geotag the photos.

GPicSync

  • Pictures geotagged by GPicSync are recognized by Picasa right away; no need to re-process them with EXIFTool.
  • You can create a Google Earth/Google Maps KML thumbnails file at the same time you’re geotagging the photos. You can also associate audio and video files with the pictures, so that GPicSync will create links in the Google Earth / Google Maps files that link to the audio/video.
  • Handy tools include an EXIF reader, a utility that lets you manually embed geographic location into the EXIF header, a GPX file reader, and KMZ file generator to create a Google Earth file with the photo thumbnails embedded in it (unlike the KML file).
  • And there’s a newsgroup where you can interact directly with the program author, report bugs, and suggest new features.

Thanks, Francois!




Photo GeoTagging III – WMMX Location Stamper

Published by
Leszek Pawlowicz
 in geotagging, GPS and GPX. 4 Comments

5/2/2009: Apparently no longer available. Check out Microsoft’s new geotagging program, or the geotagging category at right for more option

A few years ago, Microsoft was promoting something called the World Wide Media Exchange, WMMX for short, a centralized index of photos tagged by geographic location – sort of a proto-Flickr. It got a bit of press, but seems to have faded into obscurity. But it’s left behind a few useful utilities, including a nice, simple photo geotagging utility called Location Stamper.

You can download WMMX Location Stamper from this link. Note that while you need to have Microsoft .NET 1.1 or higher installed, you probably already have that on our system. You don’t need the WMMX Client Application at all unless you want it – it’s the program that lets you upload and browse photos in the WMMX index, and create photo slideshows, but isn’t required for the Location Stamper or any of the other utilities on this page. Install Location Stamper, then run it.

LocationStamper

Not a lot of options, but it doesn’t need many. Add photos to be geotagged using the Photos => Add Photos menu, and they’ll show up as thumbnails on the right. Add your GPX track with the Tracks => Add Tracks menu, and the track will be loaded into the map window at left, along with an antique Microsoft MapPoint map for the area (it would be nice if they would update this with Virtual Earth, but I wouldn’t hold my breath). Click on the “Apply Tracks” button in the lower right, and the location/time data from the GPX track will be matched with the timestamp on the photo to geotag it. Select a photo that’s been geotagged, and a circle will appear on the track in the map window to show its location.

You can also geotag photos by zooming in to a location in the map window (click on the blue globe in the upper left to bring up a map if nothing is showing, or enter a location in the search box at the bottom), and then dragging a photo to a location on the map. But the map quality is so poor, it isn’t all that useful an option here – you’d be better off using Picasa with Google Earth for this kind of tagging.

Photos geotagged by Location Stamper appear to have fully-legitimate EXIF geographic tags, but as with locr, Picasa doesn’t seem to be able to recognize those tags. But EXIFTool, along with my utility, can modify the header so that Picasa does recognize the geotags.

As long as you’re checking out WMMX Location Stamper, you might take a look at some of the other utilities you can download from the WMMX page. The WMMX Travelogue Authoring Tool lets you create a geographic web page with your geotagged photos, maps, text and GPX tracks. If you download and install the full WMMX Client, you can create photo slideshows with maps and pop-ups that can be converted into files for viewing with the stand-alone WMMX Story Viewer.




A GUI For Fixing the GPSVersionID EXIF Tag

Published by
Leszek Pawlowicz
 in geotagging and GPS. 1 Comment

In yesterday’s post, I talked about locr, a free program for geotagging photos both manually and with GPS data. One of its quirks is that while locr does successfully insert geodata into the EXIF header, Picasa is unable to read that data because the GPSVersionID tag written by locr isn’t properly recognized by Picasa. I don’t know whether that’s an locr problem or a Picasa problem, though I suspect the latter. There’s a command-line utility called EXIFTool that can re-write the GPSVersionID tag to one that Picasa will recognize, and I gave the command-line expression to use in yesterday’s post:

exiftool -GPSVersionID=0.0.2.2 -overwrite_original *.jpg

But I’m not a big fan of command-line utilities, so I’ve whipped up a quick GUI that will do the same thing called EXIFTool GPSVersionID Fixer. Download and unzip this GUI program into the same directory that has the utility exiftool.exe (renamed from exiftool(-k).exe, the name it has in the zip archive), then run it:

exiffixer-thumb.gif

Select the folder that contains the JPG files geotagged by locr (or any other geotagging problem that’s giving Picasa problems), then click on the Execute button and you’re done. If the folder contains both tagged and untagged photos, that won’t cause any problems. Not a lot of error-checking, but it will flag you if you haven’t selected a directory.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t fix this problem for photos geotagged by PhotoMapper. But it’s worth a try for files geotagged by any other program that Picasa (and possibly other programs) might be having a problem recognizing.

Addendum: Mike Lee points out that you don’t need to have EXIFtool in the same directory as EXIFTool GPSVersionID Fixer; you can also put it into any directory specified in the Path command loaded when Windows starts up. That typically includes the Windows directory (e.g. c:\Windows) and the Windows\system32 directory. Thanks, Mike!

9/3/08: Markus Grohl pointed out that with my utility, EXIFTool overwriting the photo’s original date and time with the current date and time, which really isn’t desirable. I’ve fixed the utility so that the original date and time are preserved. Markus also reports that the beta 3.0 version of Picasa no longer has an issue with anomalous GPSVersionID tags, so that you may not even need to use this utility anymore. Thanks, Markus!

Other free utilities can be found on the Utilities page. If you find this or any of my other utilities particularly useful and would like to show your appreciation, donations of any amount are gratefully accepted via PayPal.




Photo GeoTagging II – Locr

Published by
Leszek Pawlowicz
 in geotagging, Google Earth, Google Maps, GPS, GPX and KML. 4 Comments

Locr is a web album site oriented around geographic location, where you can upload geotagged photos, share them, and have them display in an album or on a map interface. Basic accounts are free, and while I assume that premium accounts will be available for a price at some point, I can’t seem to find any mention of that on the site. Geotagging can be done with separate software called “locr GPS Photo”; the software is free, and available for download even without registering for the site. Make sure you download the PDF manual as well, as you’ll probably need it. You can either manually geotag a photo using a Google Maps interface, or use GPS data to assign geotags. Here’s the basic interface:

locr free geotagging application.jpg

The software does work, but it’s not without quirks, particularly for automatic geotagging with GPS data.

1. One of the biggest pains of locr is that it doesn’t accept standard GPX files for geotagging – it requires nmea files. You can convert GPX to nmea using GPSBabel, and the following procedure from the help file:

Converting gpx file into nmea format

  • Double-click the “GPSBabelGUI.exe” file to start GPSBabel.
  • In the GPSBabel window select the “Format” of the input file: “GPX XML”.
  • Click the “Start the file open dialog” button and select the respective folder and input file.
  • As “Output Format” select “NMEA 0183 sentences”.
  • Click the “Start the file save dialog” button to determine the output folder. Enter the file name. Do not forget the “.nmea” file extension!
  • In the menu click “Options” and select the “Filter” command (or click the “Filter” button).
  • In the “Filter” window activate the “GPS fixes” check box and select “pps” as option. Click “OK”.
  • Then click the “Let´s go” button.
    The gpx file will be saved in the nmea format, which then can be opened in the GPS Photo software.

Make sure you have the latest version of GPSBabel and the GPSBabelGUI. And be prepared for problems. In particular, if any of your GPX trackpoints don’t have a timestamp, GPSBabel won’t be able to create the nmea file, and will generate an error message. You’ll have to open the GPX file in a text editor, manually delete the trackpoints with no timestamp, then save the file as a new GPX file before using GPSBabel to convert it to the nmea format. Hopefully, locr will recognize the need to accept the standard GPX format in their program, and add it as an option sometime soon.

2. Sometimes, it won’t tag a photo in a series; if that happens, click on the “Clear EXIF location tags”, and that may be enough to get it to work.

3. The geographic location is written in the EXIF tag, but some programs (like Picasa) can’t read EXIF tags modified by locr. 9/3/08: I’ve heard this is no longer an issue. The problem apparently results from a problem that Picasa has reading the GPSVersionTag created by locr. There’s a fix for this: download EXIFTool, a free command-line utility for EXIF tags, re-name the executable file to exiftool.exe, copy it to the directory with the photos in it, and from the command line execute the following command:

exiftool -GPSVersionID=0.0.2.2 -overwrite_original *.jpg

This will re-write the GPSVersionID tag to one that Picasa recognizes, and Picasa will then pick up the geotagging information in those photos.

Addendum: Check this follow-up post for a GUI for EXIFTool.

On the plus side, manual photo geotagging is fairly painless – zoom in to the area in a Google Maps interface, select the photo, and click on the “Manual geotagging” button to tag it. You can also enter an address into a search box, and have that be automatically geocoded for you. You can then move the marker manually after the initial tagging to fine-tune its position. Select a group of photos that have been geotagged, and click on the “Show photos on map” button, and their positions will be indicated on the Google Map. You can also select a set of photos, and create a KML file of thumbnails for display in Google Earth with the push of a button.

If locr would accept GPX files, not have the occasional tagging glitch, and write the GPSVersionID tag properly, it would be pretty awesome. Even with those faults, though, locr is still pretty good, especially at the price.




GPS Photo GeoTagging I – Two Simple Solutions

Published by
Leszek Pawlowicz
 in geotagging, Google Earth, GPS and GPX. 9 Comments

There are a fair number of programs that not only embed geographic data from a GPS file into a photo’s EXIF header, but also have a host of other features as well. While I’ll be posting about some of those shortly, I thought I’d start out with two more modest programs that don’t do much more than geotag the photos.

More after the fold …

Continue reading ‘GPS Photo GeoTagging I – Two Simple Solutions’




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