rf-photography.ca

Geocoding digital photos has become a popular thing to do. It makes sharing of photos in applications like Google Earth very easy. Some suggest that it’s helpful for buyers of stock photos in finding images but I’m not sure I completely see the connection there. Are stock buyers searching based on geo. coordinates? Maybe some folks could weigh in on that one.

Anyway, I began geocoding my photos about a year ago. It’s another step in the workflow but it’s reasonably automated so not terribly onerous. In my case, I used my Garmin eTrex Vista HCx which has route tracking capability and GPicSync. GPicSync uses .gpx track files which is what my eTrex creates. The workflow goes like this – Load images from the CF card to the computer via Lightroom (adding copyright, keywords, etc). Transfer the .gpx track file to the computer. Launch GPicSync, point it at the track file, point it at the folder with the image files, let it do its thing. Easy peasy. I set the eTrex to record a track point every 10 seconds. In GPicSync, I set the threshhold for time difference between track points in the track file and the time code in a particular image file at 10 seconds. GPicSync then writes the long/lat coordinates into the EXIF if the difference between the two is less than 10 seconds.  In order for this to be successful you have to sync the time in your camera with the GPS time in the GPS receiver you’re using, be it something like my eTrex, a smartphone or a small GPS tracker like those from Trackstick.

GPicSync is nice because it integrates fully with Google Earth. And…. it’s free! (my most important criteria).

There are several ways to geocode your digital photos. If you’re a Nikon user (I am) and have lots of money with nothing better to do with it (I don’t) you can get the Nikon GP-1 (~$200). It’s a small GPS receiver that sits in the hotshoe of the camera and connects via the remote release port. It’s expensive. It doesn’t work with all Nikon cameras. If you’re using it, since it sits in the hotshoe, it makes using an accessory flash difficult.  You can clip it to the camera strap or let it just hang freely.  The potential problems with those methods are pretty obvious.  There’s also at least one third party option available, the one I know of is the Phottix Geo One GPS (the Phottix website can be slow, patience is a virtue) which can be found for around $130 on eBay.  The Nikon unit does have a connector in the device to attach a cable release so you don’t lose that functionality.  I believe the Phottix unit does as well.  I’m not sure if the other third party units available offer the same thing so there’s a possibility of losing cable release functionality.  As far as I know Canon has nothing similar in its accessory arsenal. I don’t believe any of the other manufacturers do either. I also don’t believe there’s a DSLR out there (yet) with a built in GPS receiver to geocode files.

A more practical solution is needed. There are several GPS units on the market from various makers that offer route tracking capability. Since I already had the eTrex, it made sense to use it for this as well. I don’t always have it with me though and don’t always want to carry it along just for that purpose. Enter the smart phone. William Neill recently wrote about using his iPhone and PhotoPin on Facebook and that’s what got me thinking about possibilities for the Crackberry.

With the ubiquity of smart phones like the iPhone and Crackberry (aka Blackberry), I knew there were apps. available to do this for the iPhone (like PhotoPin). Being an ABA (Anything But Apple) guy, I wanted to see if there was anything available for the Crackberry. Turns out there are several options. Some, like GPS Tracker, work in conjunction with a web-based service to record your tracks. This uses data and if you don’t have a data plan with unlimited throughput could get expensive. Others don’t natively record the track file in the .gpx format.  It seems several will output in the .kml format.  There are utilities available to convert one format to another.   A quick Google search using ‘convert kml to gpx’ will turn up many options.

A little Googling and I found bbtracker. It records the track to the phone (or an installed MicroSD card) so no data usage, is user configurable and can export the track file in the .gpx format (or .kml, or both). Beautiful! And…. it’s free. (remember that important criterion above)

In short, it works.  I used it recently to create a track while I shot some throw away photos to test it, put it through my normal workflow and it worked.  What else could anyone ask for?

Here’s how I configured bbtracker on my Blackberry.  After downloading and installing the app, I inserted a MicroSD card into the slot.  Opening bbtracker and going into Options, I set the ‘Sample Interval in Seconds’ to 10.  This causes a track point to be recorded every 10 seconds.  Scrolling down to ‘Track Directory’ I opened the menu and selected ‘Browse’ and from here selected the ‘Blackberry’ folder on the MicroSD card.  By default the exported track is sent to the same location so I left that as is.  Next I selected GPX as the ‘Export to’ file type.  That’s all you need to do to configure bbtracker.  When you want to start tracking, go into the menu and select Start Track.  From here, I just choose the default track name, click on Menu and OK.  Your track is now started.  The word ‘Tracking’ will appear in the upper right corner of the screen.  To stop the track click Menu>Stop Track and the words ‘Static Track’ will appear in the upper right corner of the screen.  You can do Menu>Pause Track which will simply pause the tracking but not stop the track so you can continue without having to start a new track (i.e., if you stop for lunch and don’t need to have track points accumulated while you’re sitting in one place taking a break).  If you click the End Call/Power button while in bbtracker, you’ll be taken to the desktop so you can do other tasks but bbtracker will keep running in the background.  To export the track, click Menu>Export Track and the track will be exported to the default location.  If you get warnings about permitting bbtracker to access local content click OK.

Next you need to access the GPX track file to bring it onto your computer.  There are a couple ways to do this.  You could remove the memory card and use a card reader.  Alternatively, you can access the track file on the device with the memory card installed.  To do this you need to have Mass Storage turned on in the Blackberry and Auto Enable Mass Storage Mode When Connected either turned on or to Prompt.  To make sure you have these set up go to Options on the device desktop (the wrench icon) and select Memory.  Ensure ‘Media Card Support’ is On, ‘Mass Storage Mode Support’ is On and ‘Auto Enable Mass Storage Mode When Connected’ is either set to Yes or Prompt (I like it turned on, set to Yes).  Now when you connect your device with a USB cable, it will show up in your drive hierarchy and you can simply drag and drop the track file onto your computer.  A third way to use the file would just be to access it on the device.  Since you only have to point GPicSync to the track file and since you have Mass Storage and Enable Mass Storage When Connected turned on, you can simply point GPicSync to the removable drive on the Blackberry where the GPX track file is located.  You could also store the track file and exported GPX file directly into the onboard memory of the Blackberry but I like to keep the onboard memory for Blackberry functions like email, contacts and the like.  Accessing the track file on the device will slow the process down because the USB connection will be slower than if both the track file and your image files are on your computer.

So, if you’re thinking of adding geocoding to your workflow, are looking for easy and inexpensive options for doing it, are an ABA person and haven’t been captured by the mind-altering Jobsian Cult, check out bbtracker.  If you use it, let me know what you think of it and how it works for you.

I’ve enjoyed using Lightroom since v1.  With the improvements and new editing tools introduced in v2, it’s vastly improved.   And now with v3 on the horizon, the story should only get better.  Lightroom is now my main editing application and I typically only use PS for things that can’t be done in LR (e.g., perspective correction, more complex layer work).

As good a tool as it is for organising your photography database, I think there are a good number of people using LR who still don’t know how powerful an editing tool it is. Everything I did with the photos below can be done in PS and probably PSE and other editing applications. In most cases I find the result is better with the tools in LR and the workflow is faster and more natural. In addition, to do the same things in PS would require, in most cases, using layers to maintain the integrity of the original image which increases file sizes and chews up hard drive space.  First I’m going to show 4 images in a before and after comparison.  You may not like the photos, you may not like how I approached the editing.  That’s all fine.  I think they do show the power of the tools in LR for editing; however.  In all but one case, the only tools used were the Adjustment Brushes, Spot Removal and the Clarity slider.  In one, a slight Tone Curve adjustment was made and in the last a crop was applied.  I wanted to do a couple things with these.  I wanted to highlight the bits of colour in the surrounding evergreen trees.  Second, I wanted to bring out the texture of the Precambrian rock of the Canadian Shield.  Beyond that, I wanted to enhance contrast by darkening certain parts of the water and existing shadow areas without completely losing texture or detail.  In the last, I also wanted to brighten the waterfall itself which was hidden in fairly deep shadow and crop to create a near perfect mirrored symmetry with the reflection.

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

Primarily the Brightness adjustment brush was used as a Dodge/Burn tool and the Sharpening brush was used to selectively sharpen or de-sharpen specific areas of the photos.  The Saturation brush was used to ‘pop’ the bits of fall colour from the surrounding evergreens.  The Saturation brush was also used to desaturate some colour in parts of the water and in the last image to reduce saturation of parts of the cloud reflection.  The Brightness brush as a Dodge/Burn tool is superior to any method I’ve tried in PS, including the use of a separate Dodge/Burn layer (which is a very good method).  The ability to selectively sharpen (or de-sharpen) areas with the Sharpening adjustment brush is simpler than doing it in PS – although I still like the High Pass method in PS for global sharpening quite a lot.  The Spot Removal tool (Clone/Heal) is terrific and particularly with respect to healing, is superior to the Healing Brush in Photoshop.  The ability to very finely match the source and destination with both the Clone and Healing features of the Spot Removal tool is terrific.

When you use any Adjustment brush in LR it puts a control point on the image.  The screen captures below show the various control points for these 4 images.

These control points make it very simple to go back and change prior edits without affecting the edit history on the left.  If you hover your cursor over a control point, a mask will be placed in the image to show the area that has been affected by the specific adjustment (image below is an example).

Hover over different control points till you see the mask covering the area you want to go back and work on.  If you then click on that control point, it will become active, the specific adjustment you made (e.g., Brightness, Sharpening, Contrast, etc.) will become active and you can edit the adjustment to your liking – all without having to backtrack in the History.  If you do go back in the History and make a change, you then lose all of the subsequent adjustments (unless you save a Snapshot).  By activating individual control points, the integrity of the History is maintained yet you can still change previous edit adjustments.  It’s somewhat like using the non-linear editing feature in PS (only better and easier).

Using the tools available in Lightroom entails a different workflow than using Photoshop.  But I think taking some time to become comfortable with Lightroom and the editing tools it offers would be time well spent.  Happy editing!