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Do you know exactly where that beautiful digital photo of an ancestor's headstone (or ancestral home, or any other genealogical location) was taken? You (and everyone else) can know this forever if you put in the location co-ordinates (geographically encode) into your digital photos. The EXIF header (the photographic information header of a digital photo) has the ability to record the latitude, longitude, altitude and the facing direction of the photo. As I write this in 2008, it's still somewhat early days for geotagging, and the caveats that I've posted about IPTC/XMP digital labelling information applies, not all software supports geographic co-ordinates in the EXIF header, and some will in fact strip it out. Software that I have mentioned on this site, such as Breezebrowser and Adobe Photoshop, do support it. However, like IPTC, test it with your favourite photo editing software to make sure any geotagging survives photo editing. I'm not going to get into a detailed tutorial on the topic, there are many other sites on the internet that conver this topic in detail. I'll just introduce the concepts. You don't need a GPS (Geographic Positioning System device) to geotag photos, but if you do have one it opens up more possibilities. Manual, no GPS: You can use of a paper map to obtain the geographic co-ordinates of the object (i.e. headstone) that you've photographed. Most countries offer detailed topographic maps with latitude and longitude marked on them. However a much easier and free method is to use Google Earth to obtain the co-ordinates. This works best in areas of detailed satellite coverage and Google Earth continues to improve the detail of their database. Their detailed coverage might not get you the headstone, but you should see the cemetery and get the general location. Co-ordinates obtained can be manually recorded and then entered into the photo (see Software below). Automatic, no GPS: Automatic co-ordinate entry can be done through Picasa and Google Earth. It simply involves choosing the photo(s) in Picasa, selecting the "Tools > Geotag > Geotag with Google Earth" option, select the location in Google Earth, then press the "geotag" button to write those co-ordinates to your selected photo(s). Genealogical Note: Geotagging isn't just for current photos, either of the above methods can be used to geotag digital photos and scans that you've done of old family photos. Manual, GPS: If you have a GPS unit, you can manually record the location of each photo by simply marking a "waypoint" (most GPS units support waypoints). At the end of the day, match your waypoints to your photos and manually transfer the data (see Software below). Automatic, GPS: This is the fastest, simplest way to batch geotag photos. You'll need a GPS unit that can record a "track log" and dump that track log to a computer. You'll need software that can match that track log to your photos. The software (see Software below) does this by matching the time stamps of the track log to that of your photos. So, the main thing you have to remember is to check the time setting on your camera to make sure it is accurate (the GPS automatically gets the time from the satellites it monitors). Purists will match the time on the camera to that shown on the GPS unit. A point to remember is that what you're really getting in terms of co-ordinates is the position of the GPS unit when you took the photo. If you're carrying the GPS unit, this will then be your position, which is accurate enough for many people, but those striving for more accuracy will have the foresight to put the GPS on the ground behind the headstone (or other object of interest) before they take the photo. One final note here is that most GPS unit take track log readings at specified intervals (i.e. every 30 seconds) - check this and adjust to your needs before you start. For optimal accuracy, leave the GPS unit in place for at least two of those intervals (wait one interval, take the photo, wait for the next before moving the GPS). I'm only going to mention one product here and that's RoboGeo (www.robogeo.com), an inexpensive piece of software that will allow you to do all your geotagging (automatic using GPS track logs or manual entry). Despite the complexity of what it's doing, it's well designed and easy to use. Best thing is to download the demo and try it out (note that the demo version deliberately changes the co-ordinates a bit). |