Thursday, February 18, 2016

Set location to a photo taken without GPS information using GeoSetter

I have two camera that does not provide GPS location information. If it is just a few pictures then it it will be easy to manually set it using GeoSetter. Just select the location on the map. Choose the picture to set location and  click the button "Assign Position Marker to Selected Image". You can select multiple pictures.

If I take hundreds of pictures then it will take aweful time to set the location. Moreover, I will not be able to remember the exact location of each picture that is taken.  I do record GPS track with my app on handphone when I go for a trip. With this track data, it is easy to update the location of photos by following a few steps.

First you must import the GPX file downloaded from your phone app. At GeoSetter bottom corner you will see a section called "Tracks". Click "Open Track Files" and select the particular recorded tracks. If your trip consists of a few tracks you can download all of them. This example download only one track.

Next, selecting all those photos without GPS location. Then click "Images" then "Synchronize with GPS data file". A popup window will be shown as below


First you must choose "Synchronize with selected track" (assuming you only have one track). On the "Assignment from found location" choose "Interpolate Regarding Shoot Time...."

On the "Time Adjustment" section, Choose "Use Time Zone." The next step depends on your GPS track recording. Some track records using UTC time instead of local time. Look at the bottom right hand corner of GeoSetter you can see a track point time. Also look at the right hand corner of your pictures. It shows a "time taken" information (more info will be available when you mouse over it). If that time is the same for the picture that you know the position and the track point, the track time should be the local time.

If the track time is different, make sure you set the time zone correctly as GeoSetter take the default time zone information from the computer.

If the track time is same as your photo, Click "Ignore Existing Time Zone...". Ensure "Ignore Existing Time Zone..." is checked and "Request Time Zone..." is unchecked.  Choose "(UTC) Europe/ Dublin". Which adds an offset of 0 hours to your photo time.

Now there are times when your track time recording and your camera time differs. You must again choose a photo with a known position and note the time difference between your photo time and the track time at the exact position. Make the "Additional Time Adjustment" by setting the appropriate offset. It can be a negative value. Ensure that "Add offset values to taken date" is unchecked otherwise your photo "time taken" will be adjusted too unless, of course, you do want to sync your photo time with the track time.

If everything is set properly, just click "OK" button and it will show a popup to tell you whether you are successful and the number of successful photo that can be tagged. You can click on the "Report" button to see why the tagging failed. If all are successful, just choose "Yes" when it says "would you like to continue with the result."

Remember to click "Images", "Save Changes". Otherwise your efforts will be futile.

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