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Once you've selected valid images and have geocoded them, they can be processed.
You don't have to process the images if all you want to do is create a web page that uses Google Maps, export a KML or KMZ file to Google Earth, upload to Flickr, export a shapefile, export a DXF file, export to MapPoint or export a GPX file.
You have 4 options for processing the image's latitude, longitude, altitude, direction and time information:
1. Stamp the actual images.
2. Write the data to the EXIF.
3. Stamp the image and write to the at once.
4. Reverse geocode the images.
To rename or redate images, all you have to do is select them, i.e. they don't have to be geocoded first. However, when renaming images, you won't be able to use the pattern items that relate to location and direction.
Unless you've changed the program option for doing so, the images will first be copied to a new folder that you choose and then processed from there. If you're renaming images, you can override this behavior and force the original images to be renamed by specifying the AlwaysRenameOriginal option.
All of the images must be geocoded before you can process them with location data. If some are not, you can either delete them from the list or manually assign the latitude, longitude, and altitude information. You can quickly access these options by double clicking on the image or by typing directly into the grid. Optionally, you can use the 'Edit' pull down menu. If ungeoreferenced images exist when you select this option, you'll be prompted whether to automatically remove them before proceeding.
You can automate any of these processes by using the appropriate command line parameter(s).
Select this option to rename the image based on the EXIF date, EXIF time, latitude, longitude, altitude, photo direction, image title, associated dictation file, numerical sequence, literal characters or any combination of those.
The new file name will be based on the pattern that you specify. The pattern can consist of literal characters that are used as-is and the pattern items listed below. Note that pattern items are always preceded with a '$' character:
$date - EXIF date of the form YYYYMMDD.
$time - EXIF time of the form HHMMSS.
$lat - Latitude of the form N32-12345.
$lon - Longitude of the form W092-12345.
$alt - Altitude of the form A00745f.
$dir - Photo direction of the form 045.
$title - Title with invalid characters either removed or replaced.
$audio - The associated audio file name.
$seq - A unique numerical sequence.
Except for $title, $audio and $seq, all pattern items are fixed length. The length of $title depends on the actual title length. The length of $audio depends on the length of the associated audio file. The length of $seq depends on the number of images in the set. For example, if there are 100 to 999 images, $seq is 3 characters long. Altitudes below sea level are preceded with 'B' ('A' if it's above sea level) and if the units are meters, it's terminated with 'm' instead of 'f'. $dir is measured clockwise from true north. Decimal points in the latitude and longitude values are replaced with dashes.
As you type the pattern, the resulting file name for the 1st image is displayed as a sample.
For example, if your pattern is MyImage$seq-$date, the resulting file name would look something like MyImage004-20060704-163000.jpg. For a simple pattern like $seq, the file names would be 1.jpg, 2.jpg, 3.jpg, etc. The renamed file extension is always the same as the original extension.
Select this option to modify the disk file date of the currently selected images. Note, this is different from changing the EXIF time. When you redate the images, you're changing the actual dates of the disk files.
You can specify a specific date or redate the images per the EXIF timestamp. If you're redating the images to match the EXIF timestamp and if a timestamp doesn't exist, the image will be skipped and not processed.
If you simply want to preserve the image disk dates when they are processed, set the PreserveImageDiskDates option to True.
Select this option to stamp the latitude, longitude, altitude and time information at the bottom of the image. If the images have titles and if the StampTitle option is True, the titles will also be stamped at the top of the images. You can choose the format of the location coordinates and the header/footer font properties. View a sample image.
If there's no altitude information for the image, as would be the case if you're using an older Garmin model, it will not be included in the footer.
Unless you explicitly set it, the font size is automatically determined so that it's in proportion to the image's width and height.
RAW formats such as DNG, NEF, CR2, MRW, and ERF must be converted to JPG format before they can be stamped.
When a JPG file's raster data (pixels) is changed and saved, it must be recompressed. The amount that it's compressed will depend on the image quality that you've specified in the program options. The default image quality of 98 should be suitable for most applications.
The time is expressed as local time with a value indicating the UTC offset. For example, if the UTC offset is -4.0, it means the image's local time is 4 hours behind Greenwich Mean Time, which would be the case for the eastern coast of the USA during daylight savings time. If the offset is +2.5, it means the image's local time is 2 hours and 30 minutes ahead of GMT.
Unless you've set custom preferences, The latitude and longitude values are expressed in decimal degrees. Positive latitudes and longitudes are in the northern hemisphere and east of Greenwich England, respectively. Areas in the USA will have positive latitudes and negative longitudes.
The altitude units will be as defined in the program options and are relative to mean sea level, abbreviated MSL.
After processing, you can quickly view the processed image by double clicking on it and then selecting 'View' followed by 'Processed Image' from the resulting pop-up menu.
Select this option to write the latitude, longitude, altitude, direction, GPS timestamp, photographer copyright notice and the other required information to the image's EXIF headers. The process is lossless, so no image quality is lost. If there's existing EXIF, IPTC or Adobe XMP metadata, it's preserved when the new data is written.
If your images are BMP, PNG or a non-EXIF JPG format, they'll need to be converted to a JPG EXIF format before the data can be written. Additionally, if an image doesn't have an EXIF compatible file extension, as would be the case with BMP and PNG files, it'll also need to be renamed so that it has the .JPG extension. If the resulting file name already exists, a number will be added to the end of it until a unique file name is obtained. So, for example, if you have 3 files named pic.jpg pic.bmp and pic.png, the resulting file names would be pic.jpg pic1.jpg and pic2.jpg.
Unlike when you're stamping images, you can write directly to a RAW file's EXIF (DNG, NEF, CR2, MRW, and ERF) without first converting them to JPG.
Regardless of the altitude units you're using, EXIF altitudes are always written in meters. If your GPS can't transfer the altitude units, nothing will be written to EXIF altitude fields.
Once the data is written to the EXIF headers, make sure that you don't edit the image in a graphics program that doesn't support EXIF. If you do, the information will be lost.
You can also write the EXIF copyright and artist fields by specifying the appropriate options in the preferences.
After processing, you can quickly view the EXIF data by double clicking on it and then selecting 'View Meta Data' followed by 'Processed Image' from the resulting pop-up menu.
Selecting this option will both stamp the images and write the EXIF headers.
Once your images are geocoded with latitude and longitude data, you can reverse geocode them. Reverse geocoding involves using a photo's latitude and longitude to determine the photo's actual physical location. For example 34.39148/-85.1855 reverse geocodes to Armuchee, Georgia USA. Then, given the human-readable location, it can be embedded into the photo for future reference or for archival purposes.
The program offers 2 methods for reverse geocoding images. The first method uses the publically accessible database at geonames.org. The advantage of this is that anyone can use it. The disadvantage is that it's sometimes slow and only provides data for the USA. The second method uses polygon shapefiles provided by the user. The advantage of this is that it allows you to use your own proprietary data and it's more reliable. The disadvantage is that you must already have the data in order to use it. These 2 methods are described in detail below.
Lookup Using GEONAMES.ORG
To use this method simply select the 'On-line' Data Source and then press the 'Reverse Geocode' button. The program will then attempt to determine the corresponding country, province/state, and city. If any or all are found, they will be written back to the appropriate IPTC header (lossless).
You must be connected to the internet to use this method. If there's a problem with your internet connection, a problem with the remote server, or if there's no location data available for the lat/lon pair, you'll be alerted and prompted whether to continue. As of this writing, this method is only available for images located in the U.S.A.
The speed with which the program can lookup the on-line data depends on the speed of the internet connection and the responsiveness of the remote server. As with most program operations, you can cancel it by clicking the red X located on the button bar at the top of the screen. Status information is written to the status bar at the bottom of the screen.
Lookup Using ESRI Shapefiles
This option allows you to reverse geocode images using polygon shapefiles. To use this method select the 'Shapefile(s)' option and then load one of more shapefiles by clicking the 'Load Shapefile(s)' button. Note that the file-open dialog allows you to multi-select files, so do that if you need to include more than one. If the shapefiles are very large or contain an abnormal number of polygons or attributes, they can take a few minutes to load. After they are loaded, you can choose to write any attribute to any listed IPTC/EXIF field provided that the photo's location falls within the attribute's associated polygon and not within a hole.
For example, assume you have a shapefile with polygons that represents each residential sub-division in a county. Also assume that each polygon has custom attributes like 'City', 'State', 'Subdivision Name' etc. You could then use that shapefile to automatically write the attribute data back to the images that were taken within each sub-division. This would be beneficial, for example, to tax assessors who take pictures of properties.
The available IPTC fields for writing custom attribute data includes CountryCode, CountryName, Province/State, SubLocation, Headline, Caption/Abstract, and Keywords. Note that you can write any number of keywords to the IPTC headers - you'll want to do that if your attribute data doesn't correspond to the other available IPTC fields. You can control whether to overwrite existing IPTC keywords by specifying the ReverseGeocodingPreserveExistingKeywords option. The default is to preserve them. For the EXIF headers, you can write attribute data to the ImageTitle and ImageDescription fields.
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