- The Jackson Hole Tourism Board recently introduced a new geotag to the area, simply called: “Tag Responsibly, Keep Jackson Hole Wild.” Clicking the tag would lead to arbitrary GPS coordinates just along a freeway north of Jackson. This approach reflects one compromise reached by a number of online outdoor lovers.
- Upload or drag and drop your photos. (Only.JPG photos are allowed) 2. In the map, you will see the current geotag info of your photos. Click the map to set the new geo-location coordinates. Add some additional tags to your photo, currently we support 'Description and Comment'.
Geotag images to improve the search engine ranking for location-specific websites and businesses. A geotag is geographical information added to various media types such as photographs, videos, websites and Rich Site Summary (RSS) feeds. The data included is usually only latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates but can also include altitude, bearing, distance or place names. Two apps that I have tried so far are Motion-X GPS and Geotag Photos Pro. Motion-X GPS is an iOS only app, but I believe Geotag Photos Pro is available for iOS and Android. With either of these apps, you can use your phone to track your hike and create a.gpx file.
What is geotagging?
allows to associate each photo to its own geographical coordinates (latitude, longitude and altitude) so to be able to organize and visualize them on maps. Geotagging is specially interesting for people on holidays or who take a trip, by foot, by bike or by car: even after many years we could know exactly where we took each photo.
There are several ways to geotag a photo:
- First way is to search into a map the exact point where the photo was taken and then manually insert the geographical coordinates. Obviously is a long, uncomfortable and boring method. Furthermore it is really easy to make some mistakes because we have to rely on our memory.
- A second option is to use a camera with an integrated GPS receiver, as the iPhone. Unfortunately the iPhone camera doesn’t permit us to take high quality pictures and almost all the digital cameras on sales doesn’t have the GPS receiver.
- There is a third solution: to use EasyTrails GPS for geotag in an easy and accurate way the photos taken with our favourite camera, doesn’t matter if reflex or compact.
Geotagging Iphone
But how does it works? It is really easy: task of EasyTrails GPS is to record the route, called track, we do. So we can know accurately where we are every moment. We just have to cross-check the time we took the photo with the data of the track. Obviously we don’t have to do it manually: there are really good free softwares that can do it. Let’s see how.
Get on to practice
Let’s take our camera and synchronize its clock with the one of the iPhone. This is not necessary, because we may correct possible differences later on, as we will see, but it makes everything easier.
Now launch EasyTrails GPS, start the recording, and place the iPhone where we prefer (in the bag, in the rucksack, in a pocket,…) and let’s go take photos with ours favourite camera.
Once we are back at home we download all the pictures in a folder of our computer, together with the track recorded with EasyTrails GPS, exported in GPX format.
Now we can use one of these softwares:
- GeoSetter (Windows).
- GPSPhotoLinker (Mac OS X).
- GPicSync (Windows and Linux).
- HoudahGeo (Mac OS X).
Now we are going to see how to use Geosetter, bearing in mind that the operations to do are really similar also for the other software.
Using Geosetter
- Choose the folder with the photos.
- Select all the photos to geotag.
- Click on “synchronize with GPS data file”.
At this point this screen will open:
As we can see, in the yellow box is possible to modify the potential differences of clocks between iPhone and camera. If we have already synchronized them we just have to do:
- Choose the GPX file recorded with EasyTrails GPS.
- Click the OK button in the bottom right.
- Confirm clicking OK in the dialog box that will appear.
The map with the route we did will appear, with the places we took photos in evidence:
It’s done. Now we just have to save clicking on Images -> Save changes.
Now that the photos are geotagged we can upload in one of the many sharing soft wares and online services as Panoramio, Flickr, Picasa, etc. able to interpreter geographical coordinates to share with friends or everyone.
Really interesting, isn’t it?
A geotag is geographical information added to various media types such as photographs, videos, websites and Rich Site Summary (RSS) feeds. The data included is usually only latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates but can also include altitude, bearing, distance or place names. A geotag helps Web users find location-specific information.
Items that have geotag information can produce more targeted results in search engine queries. For example, an Internet browser can find images taken near a location when the coordinates are entered into a search engine. Web surfers can also use geotagging to find location-specific news, websites and other resources.
Geotagging is based on positional information. This metadata, or extra information about a file, is usually derived from the global positioning system (GPS) and based on latitudinal and longitudinal coordinates. Many cell phones have built-in GPS that allow for automatic geotagging. Some digital cameras also have this feature.
There are several online sites that simplify the process of geotagging. The social networking site Twitter allows users to geotag their messages and pictures. Some photo sharing websites allow users to add geotag metadata information when uploading photos from a digital camera.
Blogging and social networking sites cater to mostly mobile users. Geoblogging adds geographical information to blog entries via geotags. Tagging social networking sites with geographical information allows friends to track each other. Users can even use it to keep a log of their daily activities.
Geotag Images
Positional information can be embedded in a Web page via meta tags, which are HTML elements that provide specific information about the site to a search engine but are not seen by users. The meta tag can include coordinates. Region, place name, and altitude can also be coded in the tag.
Retail and tourism Web sites as well as other e-commerce sites that have physical locations can benefit from using geotags. They help customers searching for items or services find what they are looking for in a specific location. Having geotag information can also elevate a site’s ranking in search engines.
Geotag Imgr
Some Internet users have concerns about the privacy implications of geotagging. Giving away specific location information can open up users to unwanted interactions. For example, a blogger who posts about a controversial topic and geotags his position may find himself getting threats or being followed. Someone who blogs from a coffee shop and includes a geotag in his post may be alerting thieves that he is not home.
One way to mitigate these safety concerns is to limit the amount of information revealed. Some bloggers have opted to include location information without being too specific. They may include a city name in their geotags but not the exact coordinates of their location.