Photosynth geotagging step-by-step

Once your Synth is uploaded, you can position it on a map.
The following explanation uses screenshots from the Photosynth website in Firefox 3.0.1 on Windows XP (both the Photosynth viewer and the Virtual Earth viewer work fine with Firefox).  NOTE: Photosynth does not work at all with Mac.

First click on the Globe icon (indicated here with an arrow overlay)

Next you will have to search for your starting location, in this case Florence, Italy (Firenze).

Once there, you can use Aerial and/or Bird's Eye view to narrow in on the exact location.

As you can see above, I took advantage of Microsoft's great Bird's Eye data, and the fact that you can rotate the Bird's Eye view to see different sides of buildings, to get an almost exact match to my starting photo.

A few things to note:

• You can't geotag individual images, only the entire Synth, so you'll have to decide where it should be logically positioned.  I've positioned mine at the starting point of the Synth.
• Although "pinning" (saving) the position in Bird's Eye will APPEAR to work, it won't actually remember the position.  Use Aerial for the final save.
• Once you have saved the position, there won't be any indication in the main Synth interface - you'll have to click the globe again to see the position.
• It won't read any existing EXIF-GPS position information in your photos; currently this manual option using Virtual Earth is the only way to add the position to your Synth.

A saved position shows as a Photosynth icon placed on the map, with a pop-up square showing more information.

You can view the final result at

http://photosynth.net/view.aspx?cid=647b73f0-9549-4fa3-adc7-93e509517ffc

Previously: August 21, 2008  Photosynth geotagging