Geotagging Photos with Picasa and Google Earth
A few weeks ago, I went on a hike to Treasure Island, and I thought it’d be a good opportunity to try out the state of the art in simple photo geotagging, so that people could see photos of my trip on a map. My first test involved:
- Uploading the photos to Flickr using FlickrExport for iPhoto
- Finding the spot for each for photo in Google Earth, creating a placemark, and copying the latitude and longitude into
geo:lat=andgeo:lon=tags on the Flickr image. - Using Scott The Hobo’s Flickr Photoset Maps to turn the geotagged photoset into an online map.
The resulting map is pretty nice, sluggish Yahoo map aside, and the process wasn’t too painful. The worst pain point was the cut-and-paste geocoding process.
However, since Google just released a whole slew of geographic updates, not to mention a barebones (but snappy) photo hosting service, I thought I’d give it a try using Google tools.
First step: get the photos into Picasa, Google’s excellent free Windows photo organizer. I used FlickrDown to download the photoset from Flickr to my Windows box. It was simple, though I was sad that there was no way to preserve my photos’ tags. I then downloaded the new version of Picasa from the Picasa Web Albums site. (You need to get this specific version to be able to do the fancy stuff I’m about to describe.) Picasa immediately found and imported the downloaded photos—so far, so good.
Next, I went through and geotagged the photos using Picasa’s integration with Google Earth 4. I highlighted some photos in Picasa and selected the Geotag With Google Earth option hidden away in the Tools menu.
This took me to a slick geotagging interface in Earth.
Basically, you just drag and zoom around in Google Earth until the crosshairs (which are anchored to the middle of the display) are resting on the point that you want to tag the photo with. Then you just hit the Geotag button, the view bounces to give you visual feedback, and it moves on to the next photo. This was so much more pleasant than manually copying the location to Flickr. When I was done, it brought me back to Picasa. The photos all had little crosshair icons in the corner, indicating that they had been geotagged, and a quick look at the Properties dialog seemed to indicate that the location had been added to the image’s EXIF data.
Now that the images were geotagged, I found that I could use the View in Google Earth... option to see the photo on the map. It seems that this is implemented using some sort of dynamic folder in Google Earth called Picasa Link that constantly queries Picasa for images with geotags in their EXIF—so effectively, you can browse your Picasa library geographically using Earth! I tried adding a random geotagged phonecam image from the web, and sure enough, it showed up on Earth.
OK, so now that I had found geotagged image bliss, how could I share it? I tried the Export to Google Earth File option in the Tools → Geotag menu, which yielded a nice Google Earth KMZ file with the photos embedded.
Since Google Maps recently added support for viewing KML files, I decided to see if I could view my photos there. The results were not so hot.
As you can see, it wasn’t a total bust—the locations show up correctly—but the actual photos were nowhere to be found.
Since I’d seen examples of photos on maps, I was sure it could be done—maybe they just wanted the photos to be linked from the web. The Google Earth UI didn’t seem to give me any way to replace the photos with web links to photos. However, KML is a straightforward XML format—hand-editing ahoy!
(Incidentally, I was hoping that when I uploaded the images from Picasa to my Picasa Web Album account, it would do something smart. Sadly, Web Albums didn’t show any recognition that the images were geotagged, not even in the EXIF section. I’m sure that they’ll eventually sort that out, maybe by automatically generating KML links to Maps.)
Back to the hand-editing; first I had to unzip the KMZ file that Picasa had generated. (It’s just a normal zip file, rename the .kmz to .zip and you should be able to unzip it normally.) The only file that I needed was the doc.kml file; the rest of the archive just contained the photos and thumbnails. I stripped out all the style stuff at the top of the file, since Maps didn’t seem to be paying attention to the icons anyway. Then I replaced the contents of the description tag in each placemark with an image reference and link to the images on my Picasa Web Album. Then I uploaded the KML file, and it worked!
The result isn’t quite as nice as my original map, because I didn’t immediately see a way to get smaller images out of Web Album, but it does the job.
The verdict: geotagging with Picasa and Google is a dream, viewing geotagged Picasa photos is awesome, but the web mapping part of the Google photo story needs work.
(Incidentally, while you’re checking out my Treasure Island album be sure to try pressing the left and right arrow keys while you’re looking at pictures—you can flip through photos really quickly in Picasa Web Album!)
June 19th, 2006 at 12:51 pm
Joe,
Did you have any luck with uploading a .jpg that was geotagged by Picasa/Google Earth to Flickr and having Flickr recognize the x,y data – I guess since they just deal with x,y as just another tag (which I find really annoying) then unless you somehow stuff the data into a tag, you are out of luck.
MJK
July 9th, 2006 at 2:54 pm
You could build a google maps photo album using JAlbum/PositionMap which you can publish then on any webserver you want. So you are not dependant on Flickr or Picasa web or others and you don’t need to tinker kml files anymore.
Here is the link for JAlbum:
http://jalbum.net/
and here for PositionMap:
http://jrepository.engblom.org/default.asp?Action=viewskin&GUID=34006E2A-8F58-43A3-AF92-A1BFAB666080
August 19th, 2006 at 8:31 pm
Cool Tutorial. I love Google Earth. Wrote my own little tutorial:
Finding Photo Opps with Google Earth
I would love to use Geotaggig with my GPS receiver. I think with my tutorial it would be fairly easy to imort GPS data into the free Google Earth client and use your technique to geotagg the pictures.
I was wondering if there is a way to automatically do this, without any manual labor, by matching timestamps in the EXIF data to timestamps in the GPS?
August 20th, 2006 at 3:22 am
Andre, yes – see http://www.robogeo.com/ which will automatically geotag photos and put the lat/lons in the EXIF data.
Also, Picasa can put the geotags into the EXIF for you as well. Panoramio can read photos which have been geotagged as well (http://www.panoramio.com/).
Also, see this:
http://www.gearthblog.com/blog/archives/2006/08/makepicasaweb.html
August 28th, 2006 at 7:38 am
As Frank said Panoramio automatically locates photos with geodata in EXIF, but also Panoramio has a drag and drop interface to geotag and locate photos over Google Maps.
http://www.panoramio.com/blog/upload-a-photo-20/
October 24th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
You are awesome Joe! Hope things are well in your world sir. – cheers
November 28th, 2006 at 9:31 am
Hi All Experts,
Does anyone use google earth images as ground image planes for use in aerial scenes. I know how to stitch them together but are there any tools or tricks to make sure that the images are at the same height, angle and such to make sure they stitch well. I know in the pro version you can get bigger images but im not going to pay for the pro version when i could stitch multiple images together…
December 12th, 2006 at 4:40 pm
Wow, interesting things we can do nowanddays. Great Job with this blog and the maping!! Very cool.
Don Lapre Watcher
http://www.j-ams.org
webmaster@j-ams.org
December 15th, 2006 at 12:02 am
Hi! You can use WWXM Location Stamper.
This tool stamps the image with latitude and longitude location information use GPS track. Free + GUI :)
http://wwmx.org/Download.aspx
December 31st, 2006 at 4:58 pm
I was able to use WWMX to put the Geotag information into my JPEG EXIF automatically (using the EXIF timestamp plus a GPX tracklog file from my GPS at that time). However, Picasa2 does not recognize the resulting JPEG files as having any geotag information, even though the EXIF info is there, I can see it (File Info in Photoshop) including exif:GPSLongitude, GPSLatitude, GPSAltitude. I wonder what is missing? Does WWMX use a different tag name than Picasa expects? The JPEG files (from Canon 20D) also have Canon proprietary info in them, does that confuse matters?
January 4th, 2007 at 11:55 am
to followup, I loaded re-saved my JPEGs from a different app. (ThumbsPlus) and then Picasa was able to see the geolocated info. So apparently the EXIF info was messed up (maybe by WWMX Location Stamper 2.0 or BreezeBrowser Pro 1.5.2.3) but re-saving the jpeg files from TP7 fixed it.
February 26th, 2007 at 5:44 am
Hey Joe, long time no chat. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about getting the new Sony GPS unit (http://www.dpreview.com/news/0608/06080202sonygpscs1.asp). It’s basically a tiny box that writes down where you are every 15 seconds. I like that its UI is a button and 2 LEDs. Anyway, it seems like the kind of thing that you’d be into.
February 26th, 2007 at 7:38 pm
Yeah, I really like the (lack of) interface on that thing–pity about the Windows-only software. It’d be nice if the same device could also act as a GPS mouse for bluetooth phones, too.
February 27th, 2007 at 7:38 am
Rumor has it that the next minor release of MacOS will support the little Sony thing, supposedly the newest MacBookPros already work with it. The supplied Windows software isn’t all that hot, anyway.
http://www.macgpscs1.com/
http://oregonstate.edu/~earlyj/gpsphotolinker/
Of course, in order to achieve geotagging nirvana you still need some way to generate a proper KML file from an uploaded album. This part, of course, being frustratingly easy yet unavailable.
March 15th, 2007 at 4:44 pm
this website inspired me to try this for myself. i just today attempted getting geotagged picasa web photos into google maps, and it worked without having to do any editing to the doc.kml file. once i had the picasa-generated kmz file published to the web, google maps read it perfectly
March 17th, 2007 at 8:25 am
Joey, glad to hear that the Maps & Picasa teams have worked out some of the kinks since last summer!
March 25th, 2007 at 7:03 pm
Tried your procedure and it worked with no editing. I did the geotagging in Picasa and Google Earth. I then did the tools/export to Google Earth file. I ftp’ed the file to my server and put the link into Google Map. It worked. No editing or mods required. Cool.
http://www.bbbrown.com/images_general/Placemarks/Picasa Link.kmz
This is just a test image so the above URL will go stale pretty soon.
April 20th, 2007 at 1:05 am
Speaking about “geotagging”: do you know locr?
locr offers the ideal solution and makes geotagging exceptionally easy. locr uses GoogleMaps with detailed maps and high-resolution satellite images. To geotag your photos just enter address, let locr search, fine-tune the marker, accept position, and done! If you don’t know the exact address simply use drag&drop to set the position.
For automatic geotagging you need a datalog GPS receiver in additon to your digital camera. The GPS receiver data and the digital camera data is then automatically linked together by the locr software. All information will be written into the EXIF header.
With locr you can upload photos with GPS information in them without any further settings. In the standard view, locr shows the photo itself, plus the place it was taken. If you want to know more about the place where the photo was taken, just have at look at the Wikipedia articles which are also automatically assigned to the picture.
Use the “Show in Google Earth” button to view the photos in Google Earth.
Have a look at http://www.locr.com.
January 15th, 2008 at 12:24 am
I use GPSed.com service for GPS tracking from my N95 and for photo geotagging. It is convenient to use one solution.
GPSed Photo Take’n'Pin is a simple and free Windows-based software that adds location coordinates (geotags) to your photos. Geotagged photos can be opened in one click in Google Earth on precise places they were taken at.
I recommend everyone to try it out: http://photo.gpsed.com
January 17th, 2008 at 6:13 pm
Nice review of the steps for geotagging. I prefer Flickr. You can read another comparison of the two here:
http://professionalsnapshots.com/blog/?p=46
Or, if you’re interested in trying to automatically geotag your photos (instead of tagging them through Picasa or Flickr), check out this:
http://professionalsnapshots.com/blog/?p=40
July 28th, 2008 at 12:40 am
I’m not using locr …
I found this site http://www.trekinu.com much easy to share my album.
Trekinu site very neat and easy to use tools I like the idea and in 5 simple steps you have something to send to your friends or share in your site.
You can check this trek for example: http://www.trekinu.com/viewtrek.aspx?trkid=8h5b5glzsxa1h43