Geotag your DSLR images using your iPhone GPS and a Mac

Jacken — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 23:44:52 +0000

Geotag images using an iPhone

One of the nice things about modern camera phones and even some regular cameras uses GPS to tag photos and embed the coordinates in the pictures EXIF data. But wouldn’t it be great if you could do that with your fancy DSLR camera photos as well? Programs like iPhoto, Aperture and the upcoming Adobe Lightroom 4 can show you your pictures on a map. Many online photo sites like Flickr also uses the GPS data in the pictures to display them on a map.

Use your iPhone to geotag pictures

There’s an easy way of adding the GPS coordinates to your RAW or jpg images using your iPhone as a GPS logger. To get it to work correctly, make sure that the clock on your digital camera is the same as your iPhone. This will help when adding the coordinates later. There are some free alternative apps for iPhone like Gps Stone GPX, but I’m using an app called MotionX-GPS for logging when I walk around taking pictures. All you have to do is to start the app and create a new track. Turn off the display and put it in your pocket. Just have the app running while you photograph. After you are finished, use the share function in MotionX-GPS to send the track data by email to your Mac. You get some statistics in the email, but also two included files. One .kmz file for Google Earth, but it’s the .gpx file your interested in. Just save the file to your hard disk. Download your images to your computer. I usually use Image Capture, a very underrated program, and download the images to a folder on the desktop. Start up GPSPhotoLinker, a free program for Macintosh. Import your .gpx track data and photos and use the automatic batch function in the program to save the GPS data into the image. Now you are ready to import your images to your favorite image handling program like iPhoto, Aperture or Adobe Lightroom. So now when you upload pictures to Flickr, the GPS location is embedded in the image.

GPS tagging on the cheap

Jacken — Sat, 09 May 2009 19:58:49 +0000

I just love gadgets. That’s why it’s nice to find that I bought a Garmin eTrex a long time ago. Haven’t used it in years, but then when Apple released the latest version of iLife 09 with the map function in iPhoto I realized that it is very cool to have all the images geo tagged. So I found a program called GPSPhotoLinker, a program that downloads GPS data and pictures and by the date/time on the pictures manages to add longitude and latitude information in the picture info. When you import pictures with this information iPhoto can use that to show it on maps and make it searchable. And when you upload pictures to Flickr, it also uses the location information place your picture on a map. Very cool.

The software is free to download here. If you have an old GPS receiver like me, you need a serial cable (I made my own because of the very high prices for ready made cables), just check eBay. You also need a USB to serial converter, like the “Keyspan High Speed USB Serial Adapter.

To start tagging, just power on your GPS receiver when you start (I just put it in my shirt pocket) and then photo away). Set the clock in your camera (check the GPS clock, it’s VERY exact ) because this is information that is used to sync position information.

Download all your pictures in a folder, connect the GPS, start GPSPhotoLinker and download data from the GPS, and then select the folder with pictures you took. Press “batch” and your done!

iPhoto 09 map showing my short walk today

Map with my pictures in flickr

Jacken's Blog » GPS

Geotag your DSLR images using your iPhone GPS and a Mac

Geotag images using an iPhone

Use your iPhone to geotag pictures

GPS tagging on the cheap