How do you handle GPS-info and location labels?

[Jesperben]

Hi

For many years I have added metadata to older photos without GPS-info. When I knew the location, I found the coordinates and added them to the location label.

For the first time I now work with photos with GPS-info included - a lot easier! But how do you handle this info? Do you just let the GPS-info sit in the file, and the add a label with the name of the location - but without adding the coordinates? Or is there a smarter way to do this?

All help will be much appreciated
Jesper

[G8DHE]

The co-ords will already be present in the file as they are in the EXIF part of the metadata. You can then ask for a GEO reverse look-up which is where it will take the co-ords and ask Google Maps (you will need to register with Google API for this) for the details - be aware this can be significantly different to what you might expect! - then the Location, Town, Country etc will be filled in.
If you in the UK then the fun begins because we have
United Kingdom as Country level,
Country code GBR,
State/province comes out as England/Scotland/Wales etc
City is the nearest Google "city"
Location will be road name/number
So you will have to add in County names or you will end up with villages/towns appearing in the wrong place where they are identical names in different Counties!

Oh another nice treat from Google is if you ever shoot from a boat in the middle of a river or lake then it will come back as "Europe" even in the middle of the river Thames in London

[RobiWan]

Hi,

I am not sure if I have understood your request correctly. In PSU there is a setting for this ((Synchronize Settings -> Read Settings -> GEO Location processing ). PSU reads the GPS coordinates from the file and creates a suitable keyword for it. The coordinates always remain anyway

[RobiWan]

Oh another nice treat from Google is if you ever shoot from a boat in the middle of a river or lake then it will come back as "Europe" even in the middle of the river Thames in London

Maybe I'm wrong but I mean it's PSU not Google.
Google, Bing and others never send a "World-Region" back.

[G8DHE]

Google returns as below;

Europe_on_water.JPG (94.05 KiB) Viewed 4343 times

As you see it returns EUROPE when the place selected is in the middle of water!
This was on Google Maps nothing to do with PSU at all.
As I've spent the last 8 years doing water sports events I can assure you it happens all the time!

Europe_on_Thames.JPG (181.01 KiB) Viewed 4343 times

[RobiWan]

As you see it returns EUROPE when the place selected is in the middle of water!

Very interesting. However, Google says something else here - namely the right United Kingdom

15-08-_2022_15-14-33.jpg (74.36 KiB) Viewed 4324 times

[Mke]

You can then ask for a GEO reverse look-up... then the fun begins...
...So you will have to add in County names or you will end up with villages/towns appearing in the wrong place where they are identical names in different Counties!

And it's more unhelpful in other countries, where results in local languages are returned!

how do you handle this info? Do you just let the GPS-info sit in the file, and the add a label with the name of the location...?

For landmark locations, well-visited places and locations I'm likely to return to, I add the geo coordinates of the location to the label. That way, the label will be displayed in the 'Nearby Labels' section of the labeling panel, which speeds up the labeling process (especially with foreign locations where you've forgotten the exact name and/or spelling of a place).

For other locations I label images to a county, district or locality and just let the GPS-info sit in the file. That has always been useful, but even more so now that it's possible to locate nearby images within PSU by their geo coordinates (geo-fence).

[G8DHE]

Intriguing! I wonder what other countries version report ?

[Mke]

Intriguing! I wonder what other countries version report ?

I don't find it hugely helpful in Poland, for example, even though it's accurate...

Reverse1.png (13.46 KiB) Viewed 4309 times

...compared to the translation:

Adama Mickiewicza Avenue
Lodz
Lodz province
Poland

...or how I actually file it (using a label, rather than a lookup):
Piotrkowska Centrum tram stop
Lodz City Centre
Lodz
Poland

[snowman1]

I add the geo coordinates of the location to the label. That way, the label will be displayed in the 'Nearby Labels' section of the labeling panel

Could you give an example please Mke, or perhaps go into this in a bit more detail? It sounds useful.

[Jesperben]

Thank you all for the advice and information, I simply didn't know about the possibilities, so your replies are most helpful for me.

[Mke]

Could you give an example please Mke, or perhaps go into this in a bit more detail? It sounds useful.

Add the coordinates to the label:

LabelDetails.png (39.49 KiB) Viewed 4198 times

Then, when labeling, the nearest places to each geo-tagged image appear in the 'Nearest Label' selection (oddly in reverse order, with the nearest bottom-right), ready for selection:

Nearest.png (20.39 KiB) Viewed 4198 times

[johnbarrett]

Thanks for showing this, I have started to do it with my regular places. But I use a laptop for processing when away with a limited number of years images on it. To maintain compatibility I copy, using Syncovery, changes to the relevant years between the two. After doing this between the desk and laptop I found 2 problems.

1/ In the locations in Categories the bottom part relating to adding Geo location isn’t on the laptop it ends with Metadata with an arrow on the left side that if you click on it changes the direction but not doing anything. I uninstalled and reinstalled but no change, I haven’t used these to add location information before so to be honest I have no idea if they were there before today or been missing for some time. There may well be an option that’s been changed but I can’t find it, if anyone could point me in its direction I would be grateful.
2/ Also Nearby Labels doesn’t appear to be working either, on the desk PC a list of added locations is there but not on the laptop. Again I am sure there used to be things in this but I don’t know when it changed as I haven’t really used it before.

I don’t know if adding Geo information in locations and the copying over to the second install caused this or what!

[Mke]

1/ In the locations in Categories the bottom part relating to adding Geo location isn’t on the laptop it ends with Metadata with an arrow on the left side that if you click on it changes the direction but not doing anything. I uninstalled and reinstalled but no change

You need to check the box to activate the section, however you should be seeing more than just the arrow changing:

Box.png (15.1 KiB) Viewed 4133 times

If not, then I'd have expected reinstallation to fix it...

2/ Also Nearby Labels doesn’t appear to be working either, on the desk PC a list of added locations is there but not on the laptop.

I don't remember any way of turning off that section.

Only thing I can think of is that maybe it's not showing up because you have no labels on the laptop with geo-coordinates, depending what Syncovery is copying across & what else you're doing. In which case, maybe exporting your labels from your main machine, and importing them on the laptop could fix it (though I'm doubtful):
Main menu -> Data -> Export to Formatted Vocabulary File

Maybe someone else has some ideas?

[johnbarrett]

Thanks but when I go into geo tagging the data is showing up. There is no option to select the location adding to select. The problem on exporting data is I have many more years on the desk top than laptop (lack of space) so it would be transferring data that wasn't relevant to the laptop. Copying images and related files between the two and running verify has always worked well before adding data to the places and these two problems were only evident after doing this again with the new changes.