Mac users get choice for geotagging photos

Stephen Withers
Wednesday, 25 April 2007 14:01

Business IT - Technology

While a few upmarket cameras use GPS to tag photos with the location of the spot where they were taken, most people have to add the tags later. Mac OS X users now have a choice of applications to ease the chore of editing location information.

HoudahGeo (regularly $US34.95, introductory price $US24.95) uses Google Maps or imported GPS tracks and waypoints to obtain the location and write it into the photo's EXIF tags. Imported GPS tracks will only work if the camera's clock is accurately set, but when using Google Maps, all that's needed is to drag the map marker to the appropriate spot.

Once tagged, the geocoded images are available to other applications. For example, the tags can be exported to a KMZ file so the photos can be displayed within Google Earth.

Geophoto ($US19.95) takes a different approach, and acts as a geographically organised album. The image files normally remain unchanged, but Geophoto stores the locations internally and uses it to arrange the photos on a virtual globe. A Google Map of a selected photo's location can also be displayed.

The software handles the usual file formats, including RAW images from several cameras, and honours geotags stored as EXIF metadata in JPEG and RAW files.

Images shared as iPhoto photocasts or on Flickr can also be incorporated into a Geophoto album.