iPhoto 2009 geotagged photo support

iPhoto 2009 (part of iLife '09) will have full support for geotagged photos.  They call it "Places".
It will recognize GPS-EXIF encoded photos, and also allows for manual entry of location.  I don't know if you can do manual location by clicking on a map.  It also has built-in Flickr upload, so one assumes Apple has finally made sure to preserve the GPS-EXIF info for upload.

9:12AM "In addition to faces, we're adding Places. Wouldn't it be great if iPhoto could organize these photos around where they're taken?"

9:13AM "Places uses geotagging... new cameras like this Nikon [I assume he means the P6000 or maybe the D90 with GP-1], and the most advanced cellphone..." Flashes an iPhone -- the crowd likes that.

9:13AM Phil is demonstrating geotagging, Places will find human information about the lat / long of a photo -- say, the Eiffel Tower in Paris.

9:14AM "What if I don't have a GPS chip in my camera?" "There's a field that says 'enter event location' -- iPhoto has a database of thousands of locations. It assigns a geotag to all the locations in that event."

9:15AM "The maps come from Google Maps..." It's like GMaps in iPhoto -- bizarre. "In addition to street maps, we have satellite images..." Ah, you mean like in Google Maps? "So that's Places."

from Engadget - Live from the Macworld 2009 keynote - January 6, 2009

No sign of iLife '09 on Amazon.com yet.

This development will bring millions more people into the world of photo geotagging.

You can watch the keynote for yourself at http://www.apple.com/quicktime/qtv/macworld-san-francisco-2009/

UPDATE: I should mention that there are some existing Mac applications that support manual and automatic geotagging of photos including GraphicConverter (version 6 and newer) and HoudahGeo.

UPDATE 2009-01-07: Amazon.com now shows iLife '09 for pre-order at U$80, with release date of February 20, 2009.  Note that this software requires Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard).

UPDATE 2009-01-07: Phil Schiller just says "new cameras like this Nikon Coolpix", from the image it's clear that it is the P6000. (He's overselling his case a bit, the P6000 is in fact the ONLY consumer digital camera that I know of with built-in GPS. On cellphones, on the other hand, it's becoming quite common, and the Nokia N82 beat the iPhone to in-device geotagging of photos.) There are no other cameras in the Coolpix line with built-in GPS yet, just the P6000 so far.

Some additional info from the keynote: iPhoto will do reverse geocoding, that is, it will look up GPS lat/long coordinates to find out what landmark, city, country they may represent.

The iPhoto manual geotagging interface appears to be entirely based on searching for a location name, at least the demo doesn't show the user clicking on a map to set a location.

The Travel Book option will read photo geotags and automatically add professional-looking maps of your trip, which is a cool feature.

UPDATE 2009-01-08: CNN.com / CNET - iPhoto update helps show merits of geotagging ENDUPDATE

UPDATE 2009-01-23: Apple has a video up that shows that you can manually geotag images by putting a placemark on a map (making a "New Place") - including the ability to set a radius to include in a new area, rather than just a single point.

Unfortunately the video is in an overlay, so I can't link to it directly, but if you go to http://www.apple.com/ilife/iphoto/#places and click "Find out how to organize using Places" you will see it.

Comments

[wco81]

I've been looking at getting a logger and manually converting my existing iPhoto library with some freeware out there.

But this makes it seem very easy and simple to not only convert existing photos but any new photos. That is, it seems like you wouldn't need a logger and software to sync/embed GPS data into your photos before importing them into iPhoto.

But I wonder how comprehensive their database for place names is. Do they have Arc de Triomphe or Eiffel Tower in their database of place names or just Paris?

Or can you customize the database and add names of specific places, like a small square which isn't so well-known?

An iPhoto Event could have hundreds of pictures taken over the course of a day. So do you drop all the photos in an EVent onto one pin on the map and you can't pin individual photos with more accuracy? Well you obviously could as in the Paris demo but can you associate specific names within a city or a small town?

If it works, it seems adding place names/GPS data would take no longer than extracting logs from a logger and then using some other software to sync/embed before importing into iPhoto. IOW, no need for a logger, unless you have problems locating where you took your photos on the Google Map (or using satellite view).

Hell, if this becomes popular, maybe Google Street View can have more pictures available. That is if they take pictures from anyone.

[Richard Akerman]

I think it comes down to what you consider "good enough" location information. Under reasonable conditions, a GPS logger will fix your position, anywhere in the world, within about 10 metres (10 yards) or so. And all you need to make that work is an accurately set clock on your camera. You don't need to know where you are.

Many times I use the information from my GPS logger to find out where I was when I took a shot.

So Apple's approach for *manual* geotagging will work fine if, first, you know where you took your pictures, and second, you took your pictures in a major location or near a major landmark (I assume the database includes landmarks), and third, you don't mind having your photo in the "general area", rather than positioned exactly.

(It's not yet clear whether Apple will let you place a pin on a map to manually position a photo, or whether they only support typing a location.)

Now, if you have *no* location information for photos, which is the case for most people, having *any* location information may be a step up.

In any case, eventually most cameras will have GPS in my opinion, and certainly almost all cellphone cameras will.

In the meantime, I think you might be surprised at how *little* effort it is to synchronize photos to a GPS track, once you have done the workflow a few times. It's basically just load the photos, load the track, make sure the time offset (if any) is correct, and then click "go". I think this will still be the choice for people who want very precise locations for their photos.

Google Street View doesn't take user-submitted photos. Two examples which do are Panoramio (a Google service which will display geocoded photos in Google Earth and - I think - on Google maps) and PhotoSynth - a Microsoft panorama service that unfortunately don't work on the Mac, and doesn't read photo geographic information directly (you have to enter it manually).

I think you are right that eventually this will lead to tons of geocoded street level photos - I wrote a bit about this scenario when I wrote about Photosynth. http://scilib.typepad.com/science_library_pad/2008/08/photosynth-is-n.html

[wco81]

Hmm, so a logger will show which side of the Eiffel tower you were at when you took a certain picture of the tower?

That is useful and your point about well-known landmarks is true.

There are times when I have to guess where a location is based on an address on my Garmin and European address schemes are sometimes irrational.

I will have to install iLife 09 and see how precisely I'm able to pin the thousands of pics I've taken over the years.

It's just that the software available for the Mac to do the syncing and embedding of the GPS data seems really limited.

So the workflow would be, I connect the logger and extract the data and then mount the memory card and run the software, then import into iPhoto.

It would be nice to be able to do it all within iPhoto instead, because one reason I've stayed with iPhoto is that I want to do minimal work with cataloging and organizing my library. I stopped doing edits for instance so I have little interest in DSLRs and doing post-processing to get the most out of RAW captures in DSLR.

[Richard Akerman]

It depends how iPhoto 2009 manages metadata, timestamps and photo changes. You shouldn't necessarily have to do (geocoding workflow) then (iPhoto import). As long as iPhoto doesn't touch the EXIF timestamps and re-reads photo metadata on changes, you can import the photos into iPhoto, and then run your geotagging software of choice in-place, and iPhoto should detect the locations as they're added. That is, the GPS track matching software reads the photo in, adds the GPS-EXIF for the location, and writes the photo metadata back out to the same photo file.

On Windows, Picasa can detect changes to its existing photo database while it is running and automatically indicates the photo now has geographic information (I don't know if it works the same on the Mac).

If you have the latest version (6.2) of the popular GraphicConverter photo manipulation software, you already have the ability to geotag photos from a GPX track from a logger (I haven't tested this out yet, but all the menu options are there).

HoudahGeo is another Mac option that is just for adding geographic information from GPS logger tracks.

[Craig]

Unfortunately iPhoto does not detect changes to photos after they have been imported. So if you add GPS info to the Exif tags after importing those pics will not show in Places.

If i was carrying a logger with me when taking photos I use GPSPhotoLinker prior to importing, other wise I use my own Geotagger program (http://craig.stanton.net.nz/code/geotagger). Both put the exact coordinates into Exif and iPhoto will read them when (and only when) you import the photo.

[Love the Eiffel Tower]

This is great, I always struggle with my 1000s of photos of the Eiffel Tower, and various other places in Paris. This would help me keep track of my exploration of little neighborhoods in Paris. The only obstacle to enjoying Paris is there is no Mac flagship store (read somewhere that there is one proposed to be started at Musee du Lovre). Still I cross the channel to enjoy the store at regent street in London.