mea culpa: Picasa does manual geocoding with Google Earth

After complaining again that Picasa has no integration with Google Earth... turns out that it does.

In Picasa 2.5 select a photo and then Tools->Geotag... Geotag With Google Earth...

(I would call this geocoding, not geotagging, since the GPS coordinates are in the EXIF.)

Works with both Google Earth 3 and 4 (I am using version 4).

You get a crosshair (crosshairs?) and then you move the Earth around until it is in the right location.
That can include the orientation, which will be recorded in the Google Earth data.
The photo will then be geotagged (in the EXIF) and a photo image will be inserted into Google Earth.
On my computer it can take up to 10 seconds for the image to be inserted.
You get a new folder called My Picasa Pictures.

Very very cool.

I still want automated GPS track tagging, but this is a big step in the right direction.

Here's an example, with the photo selected, from Mackenzie King's formal garden at Moorside in Gatineau Park.

Tilt doesn't work, if you try to geotag with a tilted Earth, it jumps and puts the image in the wrong place.  You should be able to make the placemark and then tilt it though (more info below).

If you play around with geotagging the same image multiple times, you may get into problems, e.g. the nice popup window enlarged image will disappear.  Also be aware that in the default config, it's connecting to Picasa to pull the logo, so every time you open one of those image windows, Google knows.

<a href="http://picasa.google.com/index.html"><img width="150" height="25" src="http://picasa.google.com/assets/logo.gif"></a>

By default it inserts it with a blank Author and no copyright info; you can manually insert these into the HTML description though.  There doesn't seem to be any way to add this into in Picasa itself.

You can save from within Picasa (Tools->Geotag->Export to Google Earth File) but be aware that the info in Google Earth and Picasa is not dynamically linked.  Basically when you click "Geotag" it sucks the photo image over to Earth, and jams the geotag (including orientation info) over to Picasa.  So if you add e.g. copyright info to your Google Earth placemark, it won't show up in Picasa.

Here's the flat .kmz from Google Earth

Download IMG_8765.kmz

Here's a view with the earth tilted slightly (to do this, make the regular flat geotag and click done, then in Google Earth set your desired tilt, select the image placemark, right-click, Properties, View tab, click the button Snapshot current view.  Or right-click and Snapshot view should do the same thing.)

Download IMG_8765-tilt.kmz

Ogle Earth has some good step-by-step info in Picasa + Google Earth = bliss

via Google Earth Blog Picasa Web Album - Geotag Photos Using Google Earth!

I have updated my page on geocoding photos with this information.