Trick question before continuing: which location should you geotag into a picture? The one of what you see in the picture, or the one from which the picture was shot? In this tutorial we use the second criterion, but there is no single right answer, really.

This is all the information we need to get one simple Bash script to write the location of the shot inside each JPEG file, in a standard format that any geo-capable software can understand. We're going to use Firefox to create one text file containing the coordinates of all the places shown in our photographs, and another plain text file that associates each shot to a place. If you're ready, let's start looking how to geotag pictures with Firefox, its Minimap extension and just a little bit of Bash scripting, using a few shots from wonderful Sardinia as source material. It also has the benefit of being faster than other GUIs, is easily extensible to add other types of taggings, and it covers all the geotagging needs of most non-professional photographers. We're using free software that works without hassle on any Linux distribution around, and way it collects coordinates is so simple that you could delegate it to everybody who can type and handle a mouse.

What you're going to learn may not be the most sophisticated way to geotag but has all the characteristics to be immediately useful to all LXF readers who want to get started with geotagging because it doesn't require any GPS equipment. Think about it for a moment: if you like the possibilities of geotagged pictures, the biggest obstacle you're likely to face is not the shots you'll take from your next holiday, but the thousands of pictures you have on your hard disk already. If you want to publish your pictures online, geotagging makes it possible to make your own maps hyperlinked to and from your online picture galleries or services like Flickr.ĭigital cameras with integrated GPS sensors that automatically geotag every shot will become more and more affordable over the next few months, but that doesn't mean that there's no reason to learn how to do it yourself.

Geotagging photographs makes it possible to give your computer orders like “show me on a map where this picture was taken” or “find all my pictures taken within a three-mile radius of Buckingham Palace”.

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