Tagging Images with GPS
[by Peter Krogh]
When I’m looking for one of my images, one of the most valuable tools I can use is the location list in Lightroom or Expression Media. My awareness of where a picture was taken is deeply tied to my memory of that image. By using Country. State, City and Location tags, I can organize my images in a really useful way. (Add date information to this, and it’s even better.)
But adding that information can take some time. Furthermore, some locations are impossible to pin down with any specificity. “Okavango Delta” is a pretty generalized location. So how do you pinpoint images more accurately. And even more important, how do you add the location names without endless retyping.
Enter GPS – Global Positioning Satellite. It’s possible to add GPS tags to your images, and it’s even possible to use those tags to fill out the IPTC location fields, so that the Country, State, City and Location tags show up in the program of your choice. Take a look at this movie to see a bit more about how this is done.
6 Responses to 'Tagging Images with GPS'
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Great stuff Peter, thanks for the post. Do you know of any hi end digital cameras with GPS tagging enabled inside the cameras that exist now, or ones that might be on the horizon? This seems like something they might start to offer?
Ed – it is a bit curious that this is not available, given the fact that there is a very good GPS in my iPhone. I suspect that part of the problem is that any conventional onboard GPS will lose signal much of the time (indoors, outside in tall buildings). They may not want to put out a product that will generate so many people complaining that it does not work.
Also, GPS chips eat batteries like nobody’s business. Do you see how fast your iPhone batter drains when you are using it to track? A GPS chip will have significant impact on a camera’s battery life.
Even worse, the chip needs to be turned on for a while to get signal, so you can’t just power it down all the time.
I’ll be addressing all this and more in my PhotoPlus presentation next week…
I actually got GPS data into the images I shot from vacation last month. I copied my Garmin data files to my computer and used a program GPSPhotoLinker to write the GPS coordinates into the metadata of the raw files. Of course, the car Garmin didn’t go everywhere the camera did, but I got a very close match with the image to the GPS data. I had to modify my process to copy images from my cards to my computer, but it was worth it.
Becky,
Excellent! It’s very cool, isn’t it? What model of Garmin are you using, and how did you get the data into your computer? I assume it probably has a USB connection. Or does it have a removable card?
GPSPhotoLinker is a great program for this – certainly the best on Mac at the price
. For a trip that takes you to a lot of places, it’s really worth the extra time to add the tags.
Peter
Great write up – five stars. I bookmarked this page.
Nice introduce!I just have new choice to purchase GPS stuff.I have new car and I would like high speedgps toolsto plan travel by car.