Sony has announced a funky little GPS device that promises to stamp your photos with geographic coordinates. The 2-ounce tracker clips to a belt or backpack & uses image timestamps to know where shots were taken. Looks like a nice step forward, though I’d love to see this capability built right into cameras as a simple, affordable option. [Via Bryan Hughes]
This widget reminds me of a subtle but cool feature of Adobe Lightroom: if your image contains GPS coordinates, you can click the Lightroom Metadata panel to reveal the location via Google Maps. I did a quick screenshot to demonstrate.
And hey, speaking of Lightroom, the Iceland photo squad has posted Gallery 3 of their images.
Ok, I’m intrigued now. How do I add a GPS tag into Lightroom/Mac ?
Michael
[I don’t think it’s possible to add GPS data via Lightroom. The idea (at this point, anyway) is to get the GPS data from your camera or other device, at which point Lightroom will recognize it and let you jump to the corresponding point on the map. –J.]
I would like to see this (GPS tagging) in a future version of LightRoom. at the moment, I use Breeze Downloader whenever I have been using my Sony GPS unit. Breeze Downloader finds the GPS log and compares it to the timestamp on the files. It then either creates XMP sidecar files (for RAW) or embeds directly (into jpegs). this is an awkward arrangement, since in effect I have to “import” twice.
Still, for those photos that I take on trips, it’s great to have that GPS data and to go directly from LightRoom to a map. Now it’s up to Adobe to close the circle.
[Thanks for the feedback. I’ve passed along to Tom H., the Lightroom PM. –J.]
Hi,
I just purchased a Garmin GPS to attach to my Canon 5D Mk II. If I understand this posting correctly I don’t have to worry about getting the location information into Lightroom – it appears to occur automatically upon import, even though I don’t see a tag for it in the MetaData panel. Is this correct?
Thanks Juan