Adding GPS coordinates tot pictures

It would be very nice to be able to add GPS coordinates to photos in batches. I miss this possibility within DxO PhotoLab 2 (or do I miss something?).

Thanks in advance for the response to this request.

Kind regards,

Jos Saris

www.jossarisfoto.info

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Surely there’s simple inexpensive software dedicated to manipulating metadata and GPS information which would do this better than DxO PhotoLab? This seems utility territory and not a core RAW development feature.

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I use GeoSetter for this purpose and write GPS coordinates and IPTC data direct into the RAW files, before I start the developer process in PL2.

I use GeoSetter too, but I’d love to find a simple Mac program that does this well…

  • Jon

Yes, I understand you. Sometimes it would really be usefull if we could add IPTC data directly in PL2.

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Hi Ralf,

Geosetter is not available for iMac.
So that’s no option for me.
Thanks anyway for your tip.

Regards,

Jos

Hi Jon,

Indeed Geosetter is not working on an iMac.

Grtz.

Jos

Yeah, I use a VM and Windows with Geosetter.

  • Jon

Free alternative: GeoTag. Based on very reliable open source EXIFtool.
Free alternative: GPSPhotoLinker
Paid alternative (promising): PhotoLinker
Paid alternative (less promising): HoudahGeo

Writing GPS data directly into RAW files and risking making them incompatible or corrupting seems like a significant support load for PhotoLab to take on for very little gain. I’d hate to see DxO lose hundreds of man hours on a feature which does nothing to advance its USP (superior RAW development within an attractive, efficient and uncomplicated interface).

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Regarding the question about a Mac app, I use HoudahGeo when I need to geocode images outside Lightroom. It’s worth reading the user guide to understand the Ui and all the features that are available.

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In a higher price category ($139) there’s PhotoMechanic which truly has very powerful IPTC and data manipulation capabilities. Here’s the documentation for PhotoMechanic’s GPS features. CameraBits have been building an ingestion/rating/metadata editing system for more than fifteen years now. If DxO were to get really serious about an ingestion/IPTC module for PhotoLab, it would probably function something like PhotoMechanic (but visually better designed). Adding this much functionality without damaging RAW files and making them fail to open in some programs was a ten year project. Emulating and troubleshooting it would be a three to five year project depending on the quality of your team and man hours available (the DxO team is very good).

FastRawViewer is more than enough for me but I’ve got the trial running for PhotoMechanic 6 now and it works pretty well and doesn’t look nearly as clunky as PhotoMechanic 5.

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I use a NeoFinder. For forty bucks, it is an amazing DAM which is great at geotagging.

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Great suggestion Scottin. NeoFinder is a very serious piece of Mac software with fifteen years of continuous development behind it. I don’t use the geotagging features of NeoFinder but I do use it to manage my own archives and have never found it lacking or unreliable.

Does Neofinder also support geo tagging? On the website they refer to 3rd software for this.

Personally I use GeoTagster. It is super easy and fast for using GPX tracks for Geo tagging. And it is cheap. It doesn’t support reverse geo coding or manual tagging, though. For this I use just Apple Photos.

Yes. Just select photos, drop a pin on a map, and click a button… done!

Ok, so manual geotagging works. How about importing GPX?

When I use my camera on a walk I use a Garmin GPS watch to record the track. This is what I later use to tag the photos very accurately.

NeoFinder does not do the track log matchup… it is strictly map based.

I used to use ExifTool for this, but haven’t had the need in a while as my current camera does this over BTLE.

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Most of the solutions I dug up include automated import and matching of GPS logs, Christian. There’s probably a few formats of these logs – I’m not sure which ones support GPX. Please let the community know what you find.

ExifTool supports GPX, NMEA RMC/GGA/GLL, KML, IGC, Garmin XML and TCX, Magellan PMGNTRK, Honeywell PTNTHPR, Winplus Beacon text, and Bramor gEO log files, so any app that leverages it should support all of them.

It is a simple one liner for a file or an entire directory of files:

exiftool -geotag pathToTrackLog pathToImageOrDirectory
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Just make sure your camera clock and the GPX device have the same date/time set. ExifTool (and other programs) can handle this issue, but it may require additional steps. Easier if they’re in sync to begin with.

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