Photo Mechanic Unplugged

There are certain disadvantages to learning new software away from the net, especially when the help system is on-line. Quickly realizing that I downloaded the Flat version of the help system as a pdf. It not exactly the same but I was able to find and answer to most queries. The next and probably the biggest draw back was I was out most of the days either travelling around on the boat’s tender, visiting remote island, or scrambling over rocks to visit cave painting site, walking along remote beaches or out spotting birds, crocodiles, whales, sharks, turtles and not to mention getting some photos of sunrise and sunsets. In other words I was doing a lot and when back on the cruise vessel I was pretty much eating or sleeping which left precious little time to review and cull photos.

Still I had three cameras to upload (aka ingest in photo mechanic jargon). My favourite pentax, my old faithfully canon rebel, which I tended to use for wet beach landing and rock scrambling outing, just in case it got dropped, wet etc (which it didn’t) and finally the camera in my mobile phone. I must admit I could not get Photomechanic to ingest directly from my phone (a HTC UPlay) either with a cable or via wifi. There are generally only a few photos so copy copying them via a USB cable was fine. Actually I had two smartphones, even though there was no phone signal most of the trip. The oldest was used just simply as a GPS to collect wayfiles, I’d set it in the morning and put it in my camera bag (or backpack), The new phone I used used both with My Tracks to save a wayfiles and also with the default camera and location set to include geocode in the EXIF header, mainly for checking purposes. GPS logging is a pretty heavy battery drain om the phones so they often ran out of puff. So I went over to different morning and afternoon shifts on each phone for GPS tracking. I usually managed to upload every thing at least every second or third day and made a point of also running a backup to one of two external drives each time anything new was loaded, all simple to set up in Photomechanic.

Photo mechanic did make culling a lot quicker, but I couldn’t find an auto-advance setting (such as lightrooms) as I rated photos, I kept using my favourite 1, 2 Or 3 stars. However I could not use the press X for flag images to reject. These star rating are written to a .xmp sidecar files, so all the rating where useful in lightroom and AfterShotPro. Photomosaic tagging system works a bit different so I actually just used the keyboard delete key instead of a shartcut (it does also mean also doing a confirm delete each time). I will also admit that I had trouble doing selective transfer of files into lightroom if it was running. I tried both drag and drop and setting up lightroom as the external editor. However both attempts to work on the images in lightroom starts the import from disk function but without and files selected and as I had already culled I could just click on select all (and go have a coffee).

Whilst Photo mechanic process is fast, the step of just copying the photo files to the computer is actually not as fast as a straight system copy file, or Picasa or Aftershot Pro imports. They all loaded all the photos faster than the limited comparity Photomechanic testing I did. However what photo mechanic lets you do was start working on the first files loaded straight away, so you could begin your rating and culling quickly and didn’t have to wait for all the photos to be copied or loaded before beginning. This is a big deal if you have a lot of images to load (I was averaging 800 a day but had a 2,000 day in there). You can easily halve the time to load and rate your photos.

Other than the ingesting process and culling I didn’t really get to exercise photo mechanic a lot. I also have beta version of Luminar for windows on my PC but was not successful in opening an image directly from photo mechanic into Luminar, again I did have access to the on-line help for Luminar. The transfer to edit in AfterShot Pro worked beautifully but there is so much overlap in what the browser mode in AfterShop and Photomechanic do I probably wouldn’t be using them together.

I was also very keen to get the GPS tagging running but ran into a series if unexpected issues. The synchronization of timing sounds simple but because the phones had no mobile signal they kept defaulting to different time zones (not “ship” time) and the camera let me change times (both have dual cloaks) but they too often just reset themselves to the base, my home, time. So figuring out time shift was a confusing and annoyingly repeated problem. A second contributing issue was the tools I had at my disposal to show the photos on a map (ie Photo mechanic, Picasa, lightroom and google earth all require and on-line connection) This meant even when I did merge the wayfiles and photos I could not check the location on a map. Recognizing this could lead to a lot of frustration I just gave up.

In the process of getting off the boat in Darwin the screen of my beloved little HP Spectre got cracked (no idea how) and the touch screen and pen functions have stopped working. So this has put an end to my investigation for the moment.

More walking to KEEPMyTracks

I had started planning this walk a week ago to continue my tiny protest about google shutting down the wonderful little app called My Tracks. This app lets you record your track (wayfile in gps jargon) using any android phone fitted with a gps reciever. I had decided it might be interesting, and good exercise as well, to find some routes that trace out the google My Tracks logo (an orange arrowhead). My second walk was more ambitious (and much hillier). I had mapped out the rough route on google maps and even did a quick distance estimate using the built in tools, which suggested around 2.52km, which sounded about right and even taking a few photos should not take more than 30 mins. It even found and recharged up an old HTC phone which also had My Tracks loaded (but no SIM card). I figured without net access I’d be able to keep using MyTracks as a standalone app, even if google officially turned off the map access and sharing etc.

Then I went for the walk, only to immediately find their was no footpath for the first part of my trip. That’s ok I just cut through the trees and mga carpark. The obvious photos being the vista over to Mt Dandenong, Alas every where I tried to get a good vantage point the view was partly blocked, Then I discovered the my track on my android was frozen (or my tracks had not actually started taking readings, which is a problem I had noticed before on both my phones). The downhill on the first leg was easy. The uphill on the next two legs more challenging and rose a sweat. When I was only  half way up the second leg and the gps read I had travelled 2.33 km I started to think something fishy here. The finished loop gave me a reading of 3.91km. That’s big discrepancy that can not be easily explained by my small deviation along the way by necessity or to take photos. When I look at the tracks and compare the two phones, the newer LG phone has quiet a few jaggy bits which I clearly did not take. The HTC path is much more constant and follows the road more closely but is missing perhaps the first 300m (it gives remaining distance as 2.5km). With my confidence in the gps tracking a little dinted by this, I then discovered that the normal update to google drive didn’t work. The kmz files where making it to the web its just the desktop app that keeps a local copy of my google drive is “unable to connect”, and no way to find out why. has the desktop sync app for google drive been [DEPECATED ] as well? Google what's going on?

Maybe this gps tracking, and its precision, needs further investigation?

Please Keep MyTracks

My first deliberate “gps doodle”, I have unknowing done some before, is by way of a spatial protest icon. Google are planning to [DEPRECATED], in other words kill off, the nice little GPS tracking app MyTracks on April 30th,. I like many others would like them to let us keep using it. So here is a nice little protest activity for those who love the My Tracks android app. Go for a walk, run, ride your bike or even drive and trace out a large scale version of the arrow icon from MyTracks. Then post a screen capture of the trace, tweet the gpx or even the kmz file for google earth everywhere you can, with the hash tag #KEEPMyTracks.

My first attempt is only 1.97km long, took me 38 minutes because I took 120 photos along the way, and importantly I had fun.

The idea of “gps doodles” comes from Stephen Lund. If you are inspired to create some gps art yourself you need to begin by watching his amazing TED Talk.

MyTracks might be [DEPRECATED] but still appreciated

[DEPRECATED] in the square brackets is a particular google-ish word, that signifies google considers the software or devices is not longer appreciated, so google seems to have no qualms in killing them off despite a loyal band of users who love and use the applications daily. Unfortunately they have history, remember Google Reader, Wave, Google Buzz, Chrome to Phone and now MyTracks.

I have tried out a quite a few GPS apps for my phone, most have great features but are real battery hogs and many need to be on-line all the time. I had found that tracker was great for capturing my path with the added benefit I could see a map if required or stats on how far I’d walk and time taken (ie how long it might take me to get back to the start). You can also annotate points along the way, a very useful feature when you are scouting for locations or have something important to tag on your photos. It can give synthesized voice reports on progress “you have walked 5 kilometers” etc. and other less than useful "calory counter”, and other “toy” stuff. If you don't want an interactive map and reasonable time between waypoint (eg 5 minutes) you don’t get such dramatic phone battery drain.  It exports the common GPX and KML formats, that can be loaded into a number of photomanagment packages to tag photos taken during that timeframe with their most appropriate geotags (aka location for the apple fan boys). In other words it was a nice little program for a wandering photographer.

After the 30th April the Tracks app will no longer be available on the Google Play Store, but I hope it will still work. However I’m back to looking for a replacement, another google disappointment to erode my trust.

A couple of weeks ago I was walking along the track beside Patterson river to the beach and I lost my lens cap (not an unusual occurrence) I had a good look on the beach but couldn’t see it there, Then I remembered the gps was on so I retraced my steps and in a spot I where had clambered down the rock on the river wall to take a couple of “textures” of the rock work there was my lens cap in a crack between the rocks. Without being able to view the gps I never would have been able to return to that point and even with careful looking from the track would not have been able to recognized the rocks and peer into the gap between them especially with the tide rising.

PS: Join me by doing your own gps doodle #KEEPMyTracks

Trying some alternate geotagging software

I’ve been a bit quiet about geotagging lately, because I was been happy with my two favourite approaches to geotagging, using picasa/google earth &/or geosetter, also I am still a little worried about the dangers of over publising my location details. I do like being able to set the gps on my phone on, and collect a wayfile as I take my photos. Then I can later use this to match up with my photos, and have the embedded location in the EXIF metadata, the hassle here is getting the time matching, but once you figure out how the time shifting works it is nice to have your photos also organized by location.

Picasa (and google maps)

This is probably the preferred google way to do this. Rather than use the tools/geotag/geotag with google earth... you can just click on the red map tag on the left hand side of the individual photo or folder view screen. This pulls out the map dialogue, which is essentially a google map window. You must basically navigate to the photo location using an address, and you can not load your gps wayfile. However it is very easy to use and it immediately write the GPS coordinates (rather than the address) back into EXIF Metadata of the photo.

Lighroom 5 beta

Possibly like most Lightroom user, I did look at the Map module in version LR4 and had a little play but kind of dismissed it as nice but not what I wanted. Probably the biggest thing at the time was the fact that the location details where keep back in the main catalogue. It was a fair bit of work to ensure that the location detail got back into the EXIF data, also I has trouble loading and particularly got lost on the time shift dialogues. I suspect that not many lightroom fans have really delved However I have had a relook at the LR5 beta Map Module , and although I can’t see any major updates but I have found the gps tacklog load and matching does work well now. It also has a nice reverse geocoding feature that will determine the address and write that into the IPTC data. There is still the issue of the extra steps to write this back into the photos (or XMP sidecar files) however overall I it is pretty easy to use.

Photo Mechanic

  
I’m only trying out the demo version of photo mechanic, initially just to review photo load times, but I soon discovered it has neat getagging feature, being able to merge gps wayfiles (albeit I have only had success with .gpx files captured my google’s my tracks app on an android phone) and also accommodate timeshifts between the camera and gps device. Like picasa the details are written back into the embedded metadata in the original file (both jpeg & RAW). Photo Mechanic also have some very nice features for working with EXIF and IPTC metadata, including a IPTC stationery pad that lets you quickly update a lot of standard photo captioning. Also like picasa this is efficient and fast. This is a serious alternative to geosetter, that many keen photographers may already have.

Getting location into your photos is only the beginning, the real power comes with being able to use that as an additional means to organize and view your data. all of these options do give decent maps but you have to select the photos some other way first before you display them on a map.

Returning to Geotagging–seeing satellites & calibrating the time

I haven’t every stopped geotagging, just maybe I haven’t been talking about it much here. Ok, there was a little while back in Europe last year where I got slightly discouraged. I had been using Geotag Photos and loved it but one day java automatically updated itself on my PC and next one of the scripts for geotag photos promptly stopped working. The error message looked simple enough, it was trying to load a file from a location that didn’t exist. However, when you are travelling you don’t have time or energy left to ponder such bugs. So I keep collection my GPS tracks and photos, figuring I could post process the location later (as opposed to each night. Somewhere In Germany I discovered GeoSetter and downloaded it and wow what great features it offered. Now the interesting part of the story. My mobile phone, which houses the GPS automatically adjusts itself for the local time zone and if you are wandering around near Salzburg, sometimes the roaming on your foriegn phone finds a French telco and sometimes a German telco and for some very strange reason the German times were an hour ahead (no that wasn’t supposed to happen, it was some sort of roaming telco glitch). The result was a lot of my post processed photos where geotagged at the wrong location. I just lost patients before I found the time shift in my GPS tracks (months later). In actual fact that isn’t a problem with geosetter as there is a nice time change feature (providing you realize the time shift) which can be applied at the time you processing the data. It also maps out your route and photo locations on a google maps, providing you have internet access. Which is a great way to check your geotagging. A little later on in the Netherlands I found google code’s gpicsync, which is a bit clunky and old fashion (ie the user interface is very plain, but it works) and used it and the picasa/google earth approach whenever I had web access for the rest of that trip.  I definitely now prefer GeoSetter.

The other problem I had at the time was my phone’s GPS was not always working, basically the narrow street in old medieval towns effectively hid some of the satellites which should have been visible, but where hidden from my phone at street level. Worse still My Tracks, my personal favourite GPS tracking tools, just didn’t bother to record the point when there were not enough satellites found. Not only that the phone spent a lot of time looking and would quickly drained the battery. Again I only found this out after the trip. However at the time I did find GPSTrac (beta), a nice simple GPS app that promised to save battery life and basically it does report all it readings albeit with an error flag if only a few satellites are found. I now always run both My Tracks and GPSTrac and I suspect the fact that GPSTrac is running keeps My Tracks functioning better and less power hungry or is it we don’t have narrow medieval lanes between buildings here in the bush in Australia. There are dozens of alternative GPS tracking apps around, so I suggest you look for yourself and test out their suitability to your area.

When I tried to photograph the key events in the recent Transit of Venus I did carefully calibrate the time on two laptop computers, my phone and two cameras the night before but late the next day I checked again and to my dismay there was up to a 4 second difference across all of them. This is fine for geotagging I can't even run fast enough for that to make more than a couple of meters difference over that time interval.. However if I was trying to get precise measurement so I could work out the distance to Venus and the Sun I would have a few errors in my calculations. That’s academic because cloud cover meant I missed all the key events. The “problem” was that there can be non linear drift in your computer clock, and I haven’t yet found an explanation I believe, There are now no less than 7 million accurate atomic clocks on-line and there are also plenty of software to calibrate your computer and phone, but I haven't bothered trying them (yet!). What I have discovered is a great little site called TIME.is it give you a nice bold accurate digital clock and estimated the drift in time currently on your computer. The big bold numbers make synchronizing your camera and phone, within a second, nice and easy. I’ll leave sorting out the drift in the clocks and sub second calibration to you to figure out.

Some Dangers in GeoTagging (& How to remove them)

Whilst on my recent travels I was consciously trying to geotag every photo I took, which involved a bit of work for those taken on my DSLR (Pentax D20), but it was automatic for my new smartphone (HTC Wildfire). Almost everything I took with the phone had the location embedded in the EXIF metadata. Then I got thinking most cameraphone (eg IPhone) users would not even realize this and there are a lot of situations where they probably don’t want their location published, but this is exactly what happens if you then post one of these photos on the internet. There are two simples solutions too this

1) Turn automatic geotagging off in your camera phone (look under camera settings, it might refer to location rather than geotagging).

2) Use Picasa to manage (and remove) geotags

To remove a geotag in Picasa, Select the geotagged photos.

1. Click the Places button in the lower right corner of Picasa.
2. Click the red geotag icon on the map.
3. Click 'Erase location info.'

This both removes any longitude and latitude information from the photo's EXIF GPS metadata  and also removes your photo from the Picasa map. REMEMBER TO DO THIS BEFORE YOU UPLOAD YOUR PHOTO TO THE WEB!

If you look towards the end of the Wikipedia Geotagging Article you will find a more detailed discussion on the dangers of geotagging. Whilst I am still a big fan of geotagging photos, where appropriate, I feel it is important that everyone understands the privacy issues exposed by this technology.

Geotagging on the Go

I must admit I still like geotagging with picasa and google earth, it is probably now a  very clunky and old fashioned way to do it. Perhaps its the nostalgia of revisiting places I’ve already been! Anyway a new smartphone, a HTC wildfire, which is a special model for telstra and most importantly available for purchase (reasonably priced) without a contract (prepaid) meant I was now carrying a GPS everywhere I go at less than the cost of an average GPS unit.

So I figured it was time to try out some of the applications that automatically geotag your photos from a GPS wayfile. All roads quickly lead to Geotag Photos, who offer a number of programs and apps, including on-line, desktops apps (for Windows,Apple Mac and Unix) and smartphone apps (for Iphone & Android). They even have Lite (Free) versions which have reduced features on the phone apps. Specifically the Autolog Feature which will automatically log your position at regular intervals. The essence of the application is a merging of a wayfile (that traces your movements) and matches your photos by time and updates the location in your photo’s EXIF metadata..Sounds a bit complex but there are just 4 simple steps

1	2	3	4
Synchronize the time and date on your camera & phone	Start recoding location on phone* and taking photos with your camera	Upload your trip** (the .gpx wayfile)	Geotag all the photos later with the desktop application and your wayfile and photo directory

* I’m using the Lite version so I have to manually record the way points, by pressing the green map pin on the phone at the places I photograph.

** How you upload the file will depend on how you connect your phone to the computer. I found it was easiest to connect the android phone as if it was a USB drive and just copy the file into my photo directory on the PC.

All nice and easy so much so I’m giving the Lite version a really good try out, but already I’m thinking the pro version is a real photographer’s “must have”" tool for geotagging.