A new version of PhotoGPSEditor has just been released. This new version contains a minor bug fix to allow photos to load correctly under Mac OS X 10.6, Snow Leopard.

PhotoGPSEditor is an easy to use meta-data editor for photo files, plus it can match data from GPS (gpx or NMEA) files.

With PhotoGPSEditor you can add location and summary details to a photo file. Location information consists of latitude and longitude data, as well as town, area/region, and country. This can be added automatically by matching up photos with GPS (gpx or NMEA) file track data, manually (just type it in) or ‘automatically’ by placing a pointer on a map to get the latitude and longitude data. The program can then add town, area/region, and country information. This process can also be described as ‘geocoding’ a picture/photo.

The program is freeware, however, donations can be made to help support future development.

This new version runs under 10.5 and 10.6 only. Unfortunately 10.4 can no longer be supported.

Well, I have tracked down the problem with PhotoGPSEditor and PhotoInfoEditor when running under Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard)…

The problem is this line: [NSImage imageFileTypes]

Under 10.4 and 10.5 it would return data in the same format, which was admittedly a strange format, but it came back on a predictable way so at least it could be handled, and the required file type, i.e. jpg, jpeg, JPEG etc. easily extracted.

Under 10.6 the format of the data returned has been changed…. and this is causing the problem.

The fix is fairly straight forward for PhotoGPSEditor, and a new version of the program should be out later this evening – early tomorrow.

Unfortunately the fix is a bit more complicated for PhotoInfoEditor (mainly because PhotoInfoEditor handles file types in a slightly different way, and also accesses more of the ‘inner-workings’ of the file than PhotoGPSEditor)….

Watch this space for updates….

Neither PhotoGPSEditor or PhotoInfoEditor are currently working under Mac OS X 10.6 (Snow Leopard).

The programs can run, but will not recognise any photo file formats. (Apple has changed the way such information is stored under 10.6).

The problem has been identified, and a fix for PhotoGPSEditor should be out within a few days, and a fix for PhotoInfoEditor shortly afterwards.

When working on programs such as iCalMaker (iCal calendar editing software), and PhotoGPSEditor (geotagging photos with latitude and longitude coordinates) you become acutely aware of time and time zones. Working on chemCal (a chemistry concentrations and dilutions calculator for the iPhone/iPod Touch) makes you aware of units… so to be confronted by the following screen when buying a Newcastle to Glasgow train ticket is very confusing

So, what does this screen show?

What time is this?

Basically it is telling me, as train times given using a 24 hour clock, that the peak time for traveling from Newcastle to Glasgow is 01:15 to 04:00. As far as I know there are no trains going to Glasgow at that hour in the morning….

This just goes to highlight the importance of stating time, and getting the units right.

Yours, a very confused train passenger…..

New version of PhotoGPSEditor is now available. This is a minor update with improved import of poorly formated nmea files, and improved export of geotagged photos.

With PhotoGPSEditor you can add location and summary details to a photo file. The location information consists of latitude and longitude data, as well as town, area/region, and country. This can be either added automatically by matching up photos with GPS (gpx or NMEA) file track data, manually (just type it in) or ‘automatically’ by placing a pointer on a map to get the latitude and longitude data. The program can then add town, area/region, and country information. This process can also be described as ‘geocoding’ a picture/photo.

The program is ideal for geocoding photos with ‘Places’ information before importing in to iPhoto.

PhotoGPSEditor also allows meta-data to be edited in single or multiple photo (JPEG/RAW/Tiff) files at once.

PhotoGPSEditor is available for download

Nice little write-up on PhotoGPSEditor over at Bioneural.

Basically Bioneural gives a good little run down on geotagging photos on the Mac. It is a nice piece and worth a read.

I particularly enjoyed the part that said:

“One of these methods allows you to zoom in using satelite view in Google Maps to the point where you were standing—and best of all you only need to mark one photo in a set this way, and the offset will be applied to all photos in the set. Very clever:”

It was the “very clever” bit I liked!

No mention in the article of PhotoInfoEditor, which can be used to geotag photos when no GPS data is available…

PhotoInfoEditor and PhotoGPSEditor are freeware programs from MMISoftware – continued development can be supported by making donations (PhotoInfoEditor Donation | PhotoGPSEditor Donation), or purchases at the MMISoftware GPS and camera stores.

Both programs are available for download:

At the moment MMISoftware is testing a number of their programs to make sure they work with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard)…

PhotoInfoEditor is fine and works great. It can be used under 10.5 to geotag your photos for viewing in the new 10.5 Preview – see earlier post for more details.

There may be a slight problem with PhotoGPSEditor, and the program is still being investigated/tested. Hopefully there will be an update on the status and/or a new version soon.

iCalMaker is also still being checked out.

One thing that a couple of iCalMaker users have emailed about is that the program will no longer import calendars from the iCal 10.5. Well, this is actually a ‘feature’ that was added to iCalMaker after 10.4. In 10.4 the way that the iCal data was stored was changed so much from 10.3 that iCalMaker would not work at all. Therefore, to protect the user (and the user’s iCal data) a check was put in to the post-10.4 iCalMaker so that it would not import calendar data from iCal in 10.5 until a new version of iCalMaker was released.

PhotoInfoEditor and PhotoGPSEditor are freeware programs from MMISoftware – continued development can be supported by making donations (PhotoInfoEditor Donation | PhotoGPSEditor Donation), or purchases at the MMISoftware GPS and camera stores.

Both programs are available for download:

Four days with Mac OS X 10.5 (Leopard), and what have I found?

First, I have got used to the look, and I must admit it makes sense. All the grey is a bit of a shock, but when compared to a machine running 10.4… the look of 10.5 is good…

I like ‘Time Machine’ – it may not be the most customizable back-up solution out there, but it is pretty slick. Just plug in a new external hard-drive and forget it. It has already ‘saved-my-bacon’ after I accidently over-wrote a website setting file – just did a search in Time Machine, found the file, and rolled back to it.

I am still getting the ‘PubSubAgent’ message, which is driving me nuts. In the earlier post Nate commented:

“I tracked my PubSubAgent quitting errors to my Safari Bookmarks being sync’d to my .Mac account. With that one checkbox unchecked, the “Sync” runs fine. With it checked, PubSubAgent quits.”

May be this is the problem? Must give a try….

Other moans? Something happened to my Keychain and I keep getting asked for passwords…

Work on checking out MMISoftware programs (PhotoGPSEditor and iCalMaker) is continuing… The new Xcode looks good (although the changes to Interface Builder were a shock!).

Just looking through the list of 300+ new features in Leopard and spotted the following on ‘GPS’.

It appears in Preview that there is GPS metadata support. In fact it says:

“Get real information from your photos. If your image has embedded GPS metadata, Preview will show you exactly where that perfect photo was taken. Open the Image inspector and select GPS. Preview pinpoints the location where you took the photo on a world map. From there you can even open the GPS location in Google Maps.”

Fantastic! I just hope they have iPhoto sorted so when editing photos it no longer ‘chews-up’ added GPS meta-data.

Get the GPS units fired up, and those photos tagged.

For geotagging of photos why not try: PhotoInfoEditor and PhotoGPSEditor from MMISoftware.

MMISoftware GPS Store | MMISoftware Camera Store

It is great when I get emails from users of PhotoInfoEditor and PhotoGPSEditor. Some emails are bug reports, some are suggestions, some are complaints, some are users complaining the programs are too cheap … anyway, what ever they are please keep them coming.

Recently I have had some great emails:

Michael emailed me with the report of PhotoGPSEditor crashing. This was the new release (version 1.5.3 – read the post) that was causing the problems, and as he sent the ‘crash log’ I could easily locate and solve the problem (took all of 30 minutes) and a new version was posted this evening (version 1.5.4 – read the post). Thanks Michael.

Tony emailed to say how useful he found PhotoInfoEditor and sent in a few suggestions for changes. What was spooky was 75% of the changes he suggested have already been added to the new version of PhotoInfoEditor, which is currently undergoing testing. Again, thanks Tony.

Kim from Korea emailed to report that PhotoGPSEditor would not display DNG images produced by his camera. We have had a long email chat about the problem and he really helped me chase the problem by providing examples of problem DNG files .

As Kim said: “The kids wear Korean traditional clothes and shoes. Shape of Hair means my hometown symbol pine tree.”

First, Mac OS X 10.4 (Tiger) supports DNG (or so it claims) ‘out of the box’. And indeed it seems to. However, the DNGs Kim sent would not open in Preview, and would not display in PhotoGPSEditor (they reported a formatting error in the debugger). Some digging in the code of PhotoGPSEditor showed that the things really weren’t working as expected. The files were being loaded, but would not translate to an image. Some more work, and a change in the code, and the files Kim had sent (plus some photos from other users), now worked. As a final test I asked Kim for one more example of the type of DNG file his camera produced. And guess what? It wouldn’t load in to PhotoGPSEditor. This was odd… I thought that maybe the file had been damaged ‘in transit’ as Preview also couldn’t open it, but when I tried Photoshop, success! An image! Great! The file was OK, but PhotoGPSEditor didn’t work!

I then tried the file again with PhotoGPSEditor, and it showed a preview image…. odd…. After some ‘experiments’, using an unopened version of the file, I discovered that the act of opening the DNG file in Photoshop, and then closing the file WITHOUT A SAVE ‘fixed’ the photo so it could be displayed by PhotoGPSEditor. How, or why this happens I have no idea!

What was also interesting was that even when PhotoGPSEditor could not display an image from the DNGs, it could still write the meta-data (location information etc.) to the file when it was saved. Therefore, I have now added a ‘feature’ to PhotoGPSEditor that states that the image can’t be viewed, but that the program should still be able to write the meta-data.

If PhotoGPSEditor encounters a file that it can write meta-data to, but can’t display an image, it now states the fact!

These improvements in image handling, and the reporting of ‘problem’ images, will be added to the next version of PhotoInfoEditor.

PhotoInfoEditor and PhotoGPSEditor are freeware programs from MMISoftware – continued development can be supported by making donations (PhotoInfoEditor Donation | PhotoGPSEditor Donation), or purchases at the MMISoftware GPS and camera stores.

Both programs are available for download: