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Picasa's display of metadata - going, going, gone! What ever can I use now?

Avatar Mark Ford
Just as I was considering using Picasa to get to the metadata in my photos [those who heard me talking about PowerPhotos at the last Dorch meeting will know what a clunky process that was] Google decided to dump Picasa!

Does anyone know of an application that will store some of my photos and give me easy access to the metadata - particularly location & direction of camera?

Re: Picasa's display of metadata - going, going, gone! What ever can I use now?

Avatar Tony Still
Well... it's not cheap but Lightroom is the bee's knees. Aways seems to anticipate what I'll want it to do. I knew it kept lat/long (and will show the pictures on a map) but I've never thought about direction before. It is displayed with the location as N, E,SW etc but the angle is there too if you hover over the compass points display.

Contrary to rumour, you can still buy LR outright if you don't want a CC subscription (I don't) but you only get bug fixes, not any new features that go out to CC subscribers.

Re: Picasa's display of metadata - going, going, gone! What ever can I use now?

Avatar Mark Ford
Thank you Tony - yes too expensive for my needs - I will continue to save the pictures in folders and use Preview to see the metadata.

Re: Picasa's display of metadata - going, going, gone! What ever can I use now?

Avatar Roy Rainford
Would like to join this discussion with a query rather than an answer Mark. Doesn't recording location and direction in metadata depend on using a camera capable of transferring this data? I use Lightroom but don't see any data against GPS, Altitude or Direction. I use an Olympus OMD-D E-M10 and can't see any settings in the menu that would record such data.

Re: Picasa's display of metadata - going, going, gone! What ever can I use now?

Avatar Tony Still
Roy, it's not so much being able to transfer it as the camera having the means to know its location and heading. In practice, this means it needs to have GPS. It has become really common because smart phones almost invariably have both GPS and a digital compass so they just record the known position when their camera is used. It is becoming more common in compact cameras and DSLRs but it's a long way from universal (my 7D Mk2 has GPS/compass but my Mk1 didn't, as an example).

The other approach to location data is to add it when the photos are loaded onto the computer. If you have a standalone GPS, it can usually record a track of where you have been and when. That file can be loaded at the same time as the photos; photo software (including Lightroom) can then automatically cross-reference the time stamp in the photo with the times against the location track, deduce where the photo was taken and write that into the EXIF metadata. You don't get the direction the camera was pointing of course. Or... you can just use the map in Lightroom and tell it manually where the pictures were taken.

Re: Picasa's display of metadata - going, going, gone! What ever can I use now?

Avatar Roy Rainford
Thanks for the info Tony. It seems that my two cameras are out-of-date in this respect (no GPS) and I have to rely on my memory - fading! Yes I do add the location when loading to Lightroom, for captions and key words to aid searches.
Btw - I find that my iPhone 4s has "Assisted GPS and GLONASS" in the spec and a "Digital Compass". Must learn how to make use of those features sometime.

Re: Picasa's display of metadata - going, going, gone! What ever can I use now?

Avatar Tony Still
You're using them every time you use maps etc for your current position (and you're likely letting the phone embed the data into photos taken on the phone). GLONASS is the Russian equivalent of GPS, gives your phone a wider choice of where to get its location data.

Re: Picasa's display of metadata - going, going, gone! What ever can I use now?

Avatar Derek Wright
Roy

Check in the manual for your camera - it should have a Wifi system built in that will enable it to talk to the Olympus OI Share app that runs on the iPhone and on some android phones.

Using it you can get the location services in the phone to update the GPS information for each image in the camera. It also sets the time and date for the camera as well.

It will also track your journey apart from where it looses your location. Potentially useful if you are taking location critical images.

Re: Picasa's display of metadata - going, going, gone! What ever can I use now?

Avatar Derek Wright
Possible the easiest way is to take a picture on your iPhone at each location and then insert them into the appropriate place in Lightroom then you should be able to copy the GPS info to other images.

Re: Picasa's display of metadata - going, going, gone! What ever can I use now?

Avatar Roy Rainford
Thanks Derek. The iPhone 4s does have WiFi so I will try your suggestion.
 
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