So today I was able to figure out merge my GPS track from my Garmin Forerunner 405 watch, with my photostream. Not hard, just required some poking around on the internet for the right software and some trial and error in the process. I'm sure that there is an easier way, but this is the way that I made it work. So here's what I did:
1) Take photos; record GPS track.
2) Download GPS track to Garmin Training Center
3) Export TCX file to EveryTrail and create a trip
4) Download the GPX file from EveryTrail
5) Load new GPX file into GPSPhotoLinker
6) Connect camera to Mac, but hold off on importing photos to iPhoto
7) Drop pictures that are still on the camera to GPSPhotoLinker (Note: it turns out my camera was off by an hour; GPSPhotoLinker had an easy way of changing everything by an hour and then matching up with the GPS track.)
8) Manually link and save GPS coordinates of pictures.
9) Import pictures into iPhoto
10) Enjoy "Places" - it all worked.
A few notes:
- This would be much easier if Garmin allowed you to easily control the kind of file that you were exporting from their software. So far, I haven't found any options that would allow me to, though without the heartrate information, the PC version spat out a GPX file directly.
- iPhoto should be doing this directly: hello, anybody home at Apple; I thought they were all about making things easier. GPX is pretty universal.
- This is too cumbersome to worry about past photos, but I will definitely be adding this information to future streams. I will also be wearing the GPS watch on other photo expeditions (around DC or any other places that I'm taking pictures).
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Tuesday, February 17, 2009
"Faces" are good - but I want people
Just got the new iLife '09 package from Apple. Fine package and I do like the addition of "places" and "faces" in iPhoto. I was inspired to write this post given some limitations that I see in the latter, but decided that I should really take the discussion to the perhaps absurd, but complete view of meta-data that I would like.
Let's take stock of how we are doing with meta-data for photos. Here's my list of desired meta-data and my view of where we are currently (in order of easiest to address and most useful to hardest and most obscure):
1) When: this was the first and easiest issue for people to both understand and deal with - its even available in the file properties as the creation date. This has been, almost by default, become the most common and useful way of organizing large photo libraries. The "grand daddy" of all meta-data for your pictures.
2)Picture Orientation: this one is dealt with in Exif data, but incredibly many point and shoot cameras still do not provide this information. My DSLRs do just fine - its not a big deal, but it sure is an annoyance to rotate all you pictures when you import. This also represents the category of "data lost". As in, the information was available for "free" if the hardware had the where-with-all to capture it.
3) Why (event): iPhoto introduced this a few versions ago. Seems to be a useful way of grouping (e.g., "John & Debs Wedding Weekend") photos that span a medium term of time, but a bad way of trying to implement tags. Overall, reasonably useful, but I believe on the whole implemented in a very proprietary manner.
4) Where: Geotagging - good stuff, but not quite ubiquitous. Would like to see some super easy to use software to merge trail information with a photostream (I've read that it exists, but haven't been able to find it). This should be built in to the likes of iPhoto.
5) Who's in the picture: "Faces" (in iPhoto) are great, but I have tons of pictures that are full of other body parts and I would like a fast way of tagging all of my historic and new pictures with that information. There seem to be plenty of ways to use pattern recognition (not just of faces) to make this super easy. For instance, when I take several pictures of people just moments apart, it is probably a reasonable assumption that they have the same clothes on (not true for all of us, but for most of us). Why not use this information (and that of the human form) along with the genius facial recognition software to make this a "Who" not just "Face".
6) How (exposure, etc.): Nicely dealt with (for the most part), with Exif data and potentially XMP (if anybody other than Adobe ever supports that). Mostly us photo geeks like this stuff - but eventually most people might care.
7) Who's taking the picture: This comes from a strong bias in the photostream at my house. As in, I'm almost always the one taking the picture, not the one in the picture. Its not that important, but come on, let's collect this information!
8) Orientation: (i.e., elevation and compass direction) Location is good but location, plus camera elevation and camera direction completely define the source point of the picture. How cool would it be to see a virtual panorama on g-maps if done on the fly by the mob?
9) Atmospheric Conditions: I think it'd be useful to capture all of the atmospheric conditions (weather information) that were present when the picture was taken. Much more of an issue for outside photography, but the first layer of information would be whether the picture was taken inside or outside. Then, why not store temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, wind speed, etc. Most of that information could be merged at a later time from outside sources based on location and timestamps.
10) Light augmentation: This is one for the photography geek in me. I'd like to be able to track all manner of light augmentation/modification: flashes, filters and reflectors. Useful information, probably most of the usefulness of this would be in the professional/studio setting. EXIF also deals with this to a limited extent, but not generally captured well.
11) Spoken commentary: How cool would it be that you tag your photos will a few comments about what was going on. Entry should be facilitated by the camera, but there will need to be a universal way of linking the audio file to the picture file for this to be effective. Speech recognition would eventually catch up regular folks and would allow us to have a treasure trove of useful information in our photo archives.
Finally, I believe that all of this information should be able to be stored in the photo files themselves in an open format. I'm not too happy with the fact that I'm a hostage to all of the tags that I've spent time with in iPhoto. Faces and Places just make this dependency even deeper. My only hope is that some day there is a way out (somebody figures out how to write an export routine).
Let's take stock of how we are doing with meta-data for photos. Here's my list of desired meta-data and my view of where we are currently (in order of easiest to address and most useful to hardest and most obscure):
1) When: this was the first and easiest issue for people to both understand and deal with - its even available in the file properties as the creation date. This has been, almost by default, become the most common and useful way of organizing large photo libraries. The "grand daddy" of all meta-data for your pictures.
2)Picture Orientation: this one is dealt with in Exif data, but incredibly many point and shoot cameras still do not provide this information. My DSLRs do just fine - its not a big deal, but it sure is an annoyance to rotate all you pictures when you import. This also represents the category of "data lost". As in, the information was available for "free" if the hardware had the where-with-all to capture it.
3) Why (event): iPhoto introduced this a few versions ago. Seems to be a useful way of grouping (e.g., "John & Debs Wedding Weekend") photos that span a medium term of time, but a bad way of trying to implement tags. Overall, reasonably useful, but I believe on the whole implemented in a very proprietary manner.
4) Where: Geotagging - good stuff, but not quite ubiquitous. Would like to see some super easy to use software to merge trail information with a photostream (I've read that it exists, but haven't been able to find it). This should be built in to the likes of iPhoto.
5) Who's in the picture: "Faces" (in iPhoto) are great, but I have tons of pictures that are full of other body parts and I would like a fast way of tagging all of my historic and new pictures with that information. There seem to be plenty of ways to use pattern recognition (not just of faces) to make this super easy. For instance, when I take several pictures of people just moments apart, it is probably a reasonable assumption that they have the same clothes on (not true for all of us, but for most of us). Why not use this information (and that of the human form) along with the genius facial recognition software to make this a "Who" not just "Face".
6) How (exposure, etc.): Nicely dealt with (for the most part), with Exif data and potentially XMP (if anybody other than Adobe ever supports that). Mostly us photo geeks like this stuff - but eventually most people might care.
7) Who's taking the picture: This comes from a strong bias in the photostream at my house. As in, I'm almost always the one taking the picture, not the one in the picture. Its not that important, but come on, let's collect this information!
8) Orientation: (i.e., elevation and compass direction) Location is good but location, plus camera elevation and camera direction completely define the source point of the picture. How cool would it be to see a virtual panorama on g-maps if done on the fly by the mob?
9) Atmospheric Conditions: I think it'd be useful to capture all of the atmospheric conditions (weather information) that were present when the picture was taken. Much more of an issue for outside photography, but the first layer of information would be whether the picture was taken inside or outside. Then, why not store temperature, humidity, cloud cover, precipitation, wind speed, etc. Most of that information could be merged at a later time from outside sources based on location and timestamps.
10) Light augmentation: This is one for the photography geek in me. I'd like to be able to track all manner of light augmentation/modification: flashes, filters and reflectors. Useful information, probably most of the usefulness of this would be in the professional/studio setting. EXIF also deals with this to a limited extent, but not generally captured well.
11) Spoken commentary: How cool would it be that you tag your photos will a few comments about what was going on. Entry should be facilitated by the camera, but there will need to be a universal way of linking the audio file to the picture file for this to be effective. Speech recognition would eventually catch up regular folks and would allow us to have a treasure trove of useful information in our photo archives.
Finally, I believe that all of this information should be able to be stored in the photo files themselves in an open format. I'm not too happy with the fact that I'm a hostage to all of the tags that I've spent time with in iPhoto. Faces and Places just make this dependency even deeper. My only hope is that some day there is a way out (somebody figures out how to write an export routine).
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