BrewZone

Manually Geotagging/Geocoding Your Images

2. Geocoding Software Options

So, I had several thousand images taken over three or four months, and 10,000 miles of travel. I needed batch capabilities, and I needed to determine how accurate I wanted to be. These images are taken with a Canon S70 and a Nikon D70, and are both JPEG and RAW formats. I wanted to put the data into the EXIF header of the files, or a possible sidecar file. Generating IPTC keywords would be a bonus.

Several software options came up in my search:

• RoboGeo is a leader with GPS users. It does allow manual updates, but it also costs money.
• BreezeSystems Downloader Pro also syncs GPS track logs with images, and I highly recommend it for file naming and storage management tasks, but it doesn’t allow manual geocoding. It also costs money.
• Picasa is free, allows offline tagging and geocoding, but has had some compatibility issues.
• Locr is a geophoto community and software provider for Windows and Symbian. (See the site’s downloads section.)
• iTag is great free software for tagging images, including manual geotagging, but it only supports IPTC/XMP and JPEG – if that’s what you need, this is a good place to start. The indexing and search features are a nice touch.
• I have listed other options in the resources section below.

Finally I stumbled on Geosetter. These are the features that make it a winner:

• Freeware
• EXIF encoding using Exiftool
• IPTC tagging with web lookup
• Jpeg and Raw file compatibility
• Google Map interface for manual encoding
• Importation of track files from GPS (For that GPS in my future)
• Multiple files can be coded at once
• XML sidecar support
• Flickr tagging support
• You can save favorite places for use later

One main drawback is that it is only Windows based software. Mac folks might try HoudahGeo or Geotagger.

Using GeoSetter

It’s really simple. Fire it up online and it brings up a Google map page. To use this program:

1. Browse to the directory with your images
2. Browse the map to where you want to go
3. Click to add a pointer (you can drag it to adjust)
4. Select the image
5. Click apply (Once you assign a marker to an image, the marker turns blue, and cannot be moved.)
6. Click save for the info to be written to the image(s). (Images not saved will have a red border.)

Handy Hints:

• To apply a position to multiple images, just select them all (shift+click or Ctrl+click or Ctrl+A) before applying.
• Clicking into the map will add another marker.
• All of the frames are adjustable, so you can drag things until you get the ratios you want.
• I usually have the “add location info automatically” turned on in the settings (File>Settings).This will attempt to fill in the country, state, city, and sublocation IPTC fields.
• If you don’t like the generated location, head to Images>Undo. The position data is kept, but the location data goes away.
• You can edit the altitude information under Images>Edit Data.
• When you are done, you will have newly modified files, plus backups (if you ticked the box in the settings menu) with the “_original” appended to the file name.
• You can save markers to favorites using the button in the lower right of the window. A prompt appears, allowing you to title the coordinates. The favorites list is saved as an xml file in the geosetter directory.
• You can also use the edit data menu to apply favorite settings (Images>Edit Data). This is handy for working offline.

Using the Edit Data dialog to set the Image Altitude
I had a shot of Mt Augustine, an active volcano, taken out of a plane window. How should I geolocate the image? First I used Google Earth to approximate the location of the plane by getting an approximate image along a straight flight path to Homer from McNeil River, where we had been camping. Selecting Image>Edit Data from the GeoSetter menu, I then adjusted the altitude to represent a small plane somewhere around 1500 feet.



In the end, I had a nice map with all my images located on it.



The Google Earth Workaround
GeoSetter has useful but limited functionality if you are not online. It allows you to move information from one image to another without using the map. It does not interact directly with Google Earth, the program you download onto your computer, but with version 2.5.2 or newer imports either format of GE files. Now you can export your favorite places from GE, then import them into Geosetter. Begin by right clicking on the places folder in Google Earth, and selecting “save as”. You can then apply them to your images.

Other Stuff You Should Know
Exiftool is the key underpinning of many interfaces, including GeoSetter. This freeware perl script created by Paul Harvey allows the reading and writing of meta data to a large variety of photo formats, but it works via command line, and requires additional software to run in a windows environment. Consequently, many programmers have wrapped it in other more user-frendly graphical interfaces (exifer, exiftoolgui). Though Exiftool is widely regarded as safe, modifying EXIF headers can corrupt your files. Test this software on duplicate images to make sure – sort of like that inconspicuous bit of fabric you are supposed to use to see if it is colorsafe. Geosetter can create backups as it goes along, for safety sake.

One thing to remember if uploading EXIF encoded photos for public consumption, is that many services do not utilize EXIF data unless told to. (Location data especially, as it could be a privacy concern. Would you want the world to know exactly where you live?) You may have to turn on geocoding, or tag generation from EXIF in order for the software/site to utilize it.

Now all I have to do is annotate those images. I think there are three thousand of them… The good news is that most of them are of  bears, within an hours walk of the camp at McNeill River. I can get pretty close and bulk code them. Will it be worth it? Looking down at a map of my journey, I can say yes it will be.

Resources

• Itagsoftware has good tagging resources, including a list of where information is stored in image files, and compatibility issues
• Flickr users chime in on the Exif vs ITPC issue here  
• This site has good information on geotagging and Picasa 
• Wikipedia has basics on geocoded photos
• Smugmug suers might look at geocoding info
• Loc.alize.us is a mashup of Google Earth mapping and Flickr photos. A great way to explore or participate. 
• Our article on photosharing is an excellent resource
• Head here for info on converting lat/long minutes/decimal
• Outbackphoto shows how to install and use Exiftool to transfer metadata to panorama images
• Locr is both a geocentric photo sharing site, and a source of freeware to manually geotag.
• Topozone is another source of geo data, if you are boycotting google maps. (It’s USA and Canada only) It can generate lists of cities with their location data.
• TagMyJpg is another freeware option with a Google Maps interface
• kmlcsv  conversion  is a utility for getting those files into a non proprietary format
• NASA’s World Wind is a tempting terrain visualization tool see also the wiki 
• Geotagger is a free Exif and Google earth solution for the Mac. (Plus, he is a Kiwi.)
• HoudahGeo is another  useful program for Mac folks. It works on EXIF, but there are reports of problems with RAW files.

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This article was written on Friday, September 12th, 2008 and is filed under Mastering Skills. For more articles about: diy (3), Photography (6)

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