How to print exif gps data on a photo?

April 5, 2012 10:58 AM

How do I print gps data pulled from EXIF data on a series of photos? I have about 65 photos that have GPS location data as part of the EXIF data. I'd like to a) print that data on the photo (like some cameras used to datestamp images) and b) print a map showing where the photos were taken.

I'm on a mac, and have iphoto, lightroom 3&4 or CS5 to work with. I've done a lot of googling and can't figure out how to automate this process. Watermarking in LR doesn't seem to allow for variables, neither the map module in LR4 nor the locations module iPhoto allow for overlaying the data on the photos or printing the map that it displays.

posted by gofargogo to technology (7 answers total)

The Morgify plugin for Lightroom will overlay text annotations to images upon export. You can specify text from an embedded metadata field - exif data, for example - including gps data. I use this plugin to overlay a text trip on the bottom of some of the images I send to faculty - usually annotations I pull from Iptc metadata.
posted by gyusan at 11:28 AM on April 5, 2012

If you're up to some scripting from the command line you could use ImageMagick for at least the first part, one command like this to get the data and another to generate corresponding text in the photo.
posted by XMLicious at 11:30 AM on April 5, 2012

Oh, and it looks like gyusan's Mogrify plugin uses ImageMagick behind the curtain, so that's probably the easiest way to go.
posted by XMLicious at 11:33 AM on April 5, 2012

Perfect! Morgify is exactly what I needed for the first part. Thanks.
posted by gofargogo at 1:03 PM on April 5, 2012

If I was going to write a little script to do the 2nd part, I might use the GPS Visualizer web site and then glue the resulting map onto the image with an ImageMagick command. It doesn't look like that site is designed to be automated, though, so it might take some hacking.
posted by XMLicious at 1:18 PM on April 5, 2012

Huh, I'm surprised there's no printing from the Lightroom 4 map. For a one off I'd just take a screenshot and print that, but that's a bit weak.

Jeffrey Freidl's excellent geocoding plugin for Lightroom doesn't have a print option I could find, but it does have the ability to export photos to a KMZ that you can then print from Google Earth or, with a bit of work, print from your mapping app of choice. Here's a sample of some of my photos with default options; the plugin has a lot of configurability in the KMZ export.
posted by Nelson at 1:31 PM on April 5, 2012

StoryTeller is Contour's software that can make maps from the GPS output of their cameras, but since they make both the cameras and the software (and the cameras are primarily used for video) I have no idea if it works using the usual standards or if they rolled their own. But it's a free download if you have the time to try.
posted by -harlequin- at 12:57 AM on April 7, 2012