I thought it would be nice to take a look at a tool that while not technically a DAM application, is very helpful in managing a specific subset of IPTC/XMP photo data: GPS Coordinates. Not only is this application quite useful and well put together.. but this gem is actually freeware! So, without further ado, here is my review of Geosetter.

Application	Version	Review Date	Price	Review By	Techology
Geosetter	2.4.3 (Build 527)	April 12, 2008	Free	Andy	PC
Website:	http://www.friedemann-schmidt.com/geosetter/en/index.html

General Overview

I ran across a mention of Geosetter while reading some posts on one of the various Photography forums I frequent on a daily basis. It was hidden in a post that mentioned how some very nice software is coming from German developers lately. I decided to hit the link and see for myself… and I am very glad I did!

Geosetter is (as described on the company website):

“a freeware tool for Windows for showing and changing geo data of image files (e.g. images taken by digital cameras).”

And, this is exactly what the software is used for - adding GPS data into the Exif/IPTC and XMP areas of your digital images. Now, I can clearly see the usefulness of this and think this will be the next big thing that most camera vendors start (some already do) incorporating into all their cameras (SLR and compact combined). Armed with this info in the exif of every photo, DAM applications will be able to extract the data and show you exactly where that American Avocet photo was taken. Imagine looking through your database at a Lady Slipper flower and being able to find it in the same spot years later by using the GPS data. Good Stuff.

Well, until the day this is a standard feature, you can either:

• buy a GPS receiver, manually track the GPS coords for each photo and then enter the data manually into the XMP of the photo
• use a tool that syncs the GPS receiver data with the date/time of each photo to enter the data
• or buy a dedicated hotshoe GPS receiver that will add the data to each photo as it is taken.

All 3 options are fine for future photos.. but how do you get all that data into your current photo collection quickly and easily? Well.. I’ll be using Geosetter to do this job… let me tell you why.

Installation

Installation was as straight forward as can be. I installed Geosetter onto my Windows XP (SP2) machine using the default location. No questions are asked and the installation process was finished in around 20 seconds.. very quick and easy:

Once the installation was complete, the program asked how the GPS data should be saved for different file types. For example, I have the software setup to embed all edits directly into the EXIF and IPTC/XMP sections of the photo for JPG, TIFF and DNG files. For RAW files, I have it setup to only write this data to a sidecar file and to not update the EXIF data with the NEF itself. There are some other options like whether you want the file to update the modified date/time of the image after writing out the GPS data. You can also adjust different IPTC data automatically using a back-end into ExifTool… Here is the screen that appears:

With these options determined, the installation is complete and the software can be run for the first time.

User Interface (GUI)

Once the program begins, the Main GUI appears and is broken down into a few different panels: File Manager, Image Preview and the most important part, the Map:

Let’s look at each panel in more detail.

File Manager

The File manager can be setup so that you can view either a detailed list or image thumbnails (as shown). You can define exactly which fields to display in both modes and choose the display order of each field. In the example below, I’ve chosen to display the date-time of the photo, coordinates, country, state, city, sublocation and keywords for each thumbnail:

As you can see in the image above, blue markers are added to the map once I add the geo data to the image by using the small pin icons along the left side of the map. Once the data has been added to the image, the info will show in red under the thumbnail. This indicates that the data has not been saved to the image IPTC/XMP yet. To do so, you just need to hit the Save Icon in the File Manager which will save all selected images. The thumbnail data will then appear with black text again to indicate the information has been save to the file (or the sidecar file). Quick and easy!

There are lots of other neat things you can do via the File Manager. Here is a display of the icons at the top of the File Manager:

Starting from the left:

• the File List / Thumbnail toggle to determine what displays for the images. This is also where you can determine what file info to display under each thumbnail, the sort order of the images and what filter to set to restrict what images appear (ie: JPG only, etc).
• the sort order button (same as above) to determine which column of data to sort on (ie: filename, keywords, camera model, etc)
• the filter button (same as above) to determine which image types to display. You can choose to display: all non-raw, all Raw or specific image formats.
• the refresh button (F5) to update the thumbnail display
• the info button (Ctrl-I) which is used to display a window with all the EXIF, IPTC and XMP data

• the Info Balloon button to display detailed info about the selected image over the pin icon on the map:

• the Detail Edit button (Ctrl-E) to bring up the enter/edit image details box for the selected image(s) (more on this later).
• the Sync with GPS data button will bring up a box where you can choose a GPS data file that would have been generated from a GPS receiver allowing you to automate the process by using the photo date/time to sync with the GPS date/time:

• the undo/redo buttons to obviously undo and redo operations.
• the save button to save all modifications made into the IPTC/XMP sections of the image.
• the sync button which will sync the GPS data of the selected images with another image (basically, copy geo data from image to image).
• the export to google earth button which will export your photo and GPS data to a Google Earth/Map file

Preview Panel

This is the panel where a larger version of your thumbnail will display:

Not much to say here except the preview can be set to fit automatically, original size or to any zoom level you’d like (ok… well to 1000% anyway!).

Map Panel

This is the real neat part of this application:

By default, the map that is displayed is a google map file from the creator’s website. The link can be changed from the MAP tab in the Settings but it is not apparent what kind of file is needed. Since there is not help file included in the program and the website doesn’t offer much help other than a 3 step tutorial on how to set data to a photo, I’m not sure how to link your own maps (or why you would)? In any event, the sample map that loads seems up-to-date but I just worry what would happen if the link went offline…

The map can be used to automatically seed selected photos with GPS data. To do this, I selected an image from the file manager, clicked a spot on the map that represented where the photo was taken and then clicked the little red map icon on the left side of the map. This is all it took to send GPS coordinates to my file which I then saved to the image via the save button. Simple and clean. Once you do this, the map pointer turns blue and becomes fixed on the map. If you later find add’l images that also were taken in that spot, all you need to do is click the flag, then click the button on the left to sync them all to that location. Couldn’t be easier!

Also, if you already have images with GPS data and want to place markers on the map at those locations, you can use the other icon to send the data to the map where a red pin will appear.

Other neat things you can do with the map panel:

• by choosing the 3rd button, you can set blue markers on the map for all images that have GPS data listed in the File Manager. This is a neat way to plot say photos taken during a trip.
• by choosing the 4th button, all markers are removed from the map.
• the 5th button is used to zoom the map to the location of the selected image.
• finally, the 6th button is used to zoom the map to a general location where all images in the File Manager can be seen.

At the very bottom of the Map Panel, you can save and use Favorite Locations that will take you directly to the GPS coordinates on the map. This is very handy to set things up like: HOME and then quickly and easily be taken directly to your address.

In conclusion, I find the GUI to be nicely put together. All three panels work well together and nicely use data from each other to set and view the GPS data. The data tends to update quickly and even the map responds well to input. The only gripe I have is… sometimes the mouse scroll wheel will cease working in the map. Typcially, turning the wheel, will let you zoom in and out of the google map… something I use often at maps.google.com and really enjoy not having to move the mouse to the zoom bar. This works ok about 50% of the time. It seems like it goes haywire after adding a point to the map. Nothing major.. but an annoyance all the same.

Metadata Handling

While non-GPS Metadata isn’t really the focus of this application, I admire the software creator’s insight to include the ability to view and edit it. To access the Edit Data window, you can either double-click an image or hit the Edit Data button (Ctrl-E) in the File manager. The Edit Data window will then open and will display either you single file or group of selected file’s info to edit:

As the box shows, you can edit a lot of metadata from this screen. The window will open to the Location tab where you can edit any GPS related info. One really nice option in the program is it automatically adds certain GPS data into your files along with the GPS coords. County Code, Country, State, City and Sublocation are all filed into the IPTC/XMP automatically if you set them up to in the Settings. That’s a really nice option to round out your image details.. and it will be very accurate since you are using GPS data to gather the location.

As you can also see, you can edit Categories/Keywords:

Here you will notice that the program automatically created keywords for the info as well and added them to the IPTC data. This is controlled by the Settings so if you prefer to not have this info added as keywords, you can simply leave that option off. The other tabs also show IPTC data that you can modify and/or edit. There is also a custom tab that allows you to define which fields you’d like to see for a “one stop” editing location.

You can also setup templates to automatically fill out date such as copyright, photographer and other data that wouldn’t change that often.

So… the Edit Data box is a real bonus in this application and something that is quite useful as you add data to the files.

The Kitchen Sink

Well there isn’t much else to the program except for one item that I don’t have all the details on (since there is not help file or info on the website about it): Tracks. I believe that track files are those created by certain GPS receivers and stored in formats such as NMEA, GPX, PLT and Sony LOG. My guess is that if you have these files in the directory of your images, then you can view the “track” on the map that the receiver recorded. In addition, it would appear that this allows you to sync your images directly with the location data in the track file based on exact date/time. Handy if you have your GPS receiver and camera date/time perfectly synced together and want to automate the process a bit. You can view track file info in the Tracks Panel which shows either to the left, right, top or bottom of the map. I was able to locate a GPX file on the internet just to see what the program would do with it… here is what it looks like:

As you can see, it displayed a blue (user definable color) track on the map. Just for fun, the file said

“it represents a boat daytrip from the Peenemünde Harbor to the Isle of Ruden, Germany in the Baltic Sea.
Peenemünde is at the north-west end of the Island of Usedom in the state of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern.
It is the place where the “V2″ rockets where developped by Wernher von Braun (later NASA head)
during World War II”.

The tracks panel allows you to zoom directly to this spot on the map, change the track color, load or save other track files and manage multiple track files (like hiding certain ones and sorting them, etc).

So, if you have a small GPS receiver and want to automate the process.. tracks might be for you!

Conclusion

GeoSetter was a wonderful surprise for me. Since I do almost daily searches for DAM related software (I know.. I know), I was pleasantly surprised to find a program fully developed that I hadn’t known about. Once I loaded it up and started using it… I was even more happy for it is a wonderful tool that I’ve added to my permanent group of DAM tools.

I love going through my images and dropping little blue flags onto the map and linking them with my photos. I feel that having this GPS data embedded into my photos will be a really cool way to organize and use them in the future.

There are a couple things that I wish the program could do to make the process of going through your existing collection a bit easier. For example, it would be nice if you could choose to do a search on IPTC/XMP fields to populate the File Manager from file anywhere on your system. That way, you could search for files by keyword (”Home” for example) and all these images could be taken care of together (since they all hit the same GPS coords). I thought perhaps I could cheat and say do a search in ACDSee Pro 2 for these images and simple drag/drop them into GeoSetter… not a good idea. GeoSetter uses the windows file manager for the File Manager panel and the drag/drop was translated as a Move… and my images werw moved into the startup folder in GeoSetter… ooops!

To get around this in a way… I basically took an entire folders worth of images, chose to show the keywords as a column in the List View and then did a sort on that column (clicking the Keywords header). In this way, I was able to see all images with home together and could work from there… a workaround.. but an “import” tool would be oh so nice.

Also, as previously mentioned, the mouse wheel for zooming in/out tends to go on the fritz every so often.. nothing major but I wonder what the problem could be?

So.. I highly recommend this program if you want to add GPS data to your photos. A daunting task made that much easier with this dedicated tool that really does a nice job. Did I mention it was free?

Pros

Speed: Very good speed. When writing back the GPS data into the files I did see that it took some time - longer than I would have thought for the 3 sample files I did.. but nothing outrageous.

GUI: Nicely done. Simple windows that provide enough detail so you can get the job done. Panels can be resized so you can increase the areas you need more detail and decrease others.

Metadata: A great surprise. The ability to edit/view IPTC data while working on the GPS info is a great plus. The fact that the location data is also written into the file along with the GPS coordinates is a nice time saving feature.

Price: Free! Although a donation would be nice and I will be making one!

Cons

Mouse Wheel: Stops zooming in the Map after certain functions.Help File: None and certain features (tracks) are hard to figure out.Filters: Can only filter images once you choose a folder and then only be file type. Would be nice if you could search for items by ITPC data and work on them, further narrowing the scope of files by using filters or searches. Help File: None present in the program or on the website.