The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

Earlier this week we posted on PhotoInfoEditor a small application for geocoding (adding location information to the metadata of digital photos). Well that seemed to shake some geocoding fans out of the woodwork, and so now we have a couple more ways to do it (both also donationware). First, Brian wrote in to let us know about GPSPhotoLinker from Jeffrey Early, a small application that will automatically insert geocoding info into pictures by linking the photo to a GPX format log file from a stand-along GPS receiver. In other words, you need to have a GPS receiver with you and on while you're out and about taking pictures. When you get home you upload the log file and the pictures to your Mac and GPSPhotoLinker will compare the time stamps of your pictures to the GPX log file locations and insert the appropriate latitude and longitude into the photos' metadata. Needless to say, for this to work properly requires that the camera and the GPS receiver's internal clocks be synchronized.

In the comments on the PhotoInfoEditor post, Craig Stanton brought our attention to his two related applications for geocoding using Google Earth. First Geotagger allows you to mark photo locations using Google Earth 4. You just "position Google Earth (version 4 only) over the location you wish to insert into your images, then drag your images (jpegs only) onto the Geotagger icon" and the photos will be tagged. For iPhoto users, Craig also has an iPhoto 6 plugin, iPhotoToGoogleEarth, that "will export photos for viewing in Google Earth" (obviously this only works if the photos already have the location metadata in them).

Thanks Brian and Craig!