Geocoding Photos with RoboGEO

by Ethan Welty, 01.22.2008

Unit: Garmin GPSmap 60CS

Route calculation, tracks, waypoints, electronic compass, barometric altimeter.

manual | drivers
Software: RoboGEO v5.3
RoboGEO geocodes digital photos with location data (latitude, longitude, altitude, photo
direction, etc.) using GPS tracklogs and waypoints, allows various editing operations and
exports to Google Map, Google Earth, Flickr, GPX, DXF, MapPoint and ArcGIS
shapefile formats. It cannot, however, interpolate between tracklog points or waypoints.

download | documentation
Objective: This protocol will teach you how to properly manage a digital camera
and GPS unit in the field, embed location data into your images, produce an ESRI
point shapefile of the image locations, and package it into an ArcGIS map with
relative-path hyperlinks that can easily be shared with others.
1. Take photos in the field.
a) Setup the GPS unit
- Turn ON the GPS unit. The UTC time will update once satellite connection is established.
- Set the time zone: Main Menu Setup Clock Time Zone
- Set Daylight Saving to Auto: Main Menu Setup Clock Daylight Saving Time
b) Setup the camera
- Set the camera date and time to match the clock on the GPS unit.
- If the camera does not allow you to change the seconds, update all the other fields and
take a photo of the clock display on the GPS unit with the camera. All digital cameras
embed a capture time, with seconds, into each photo, which you can use later to calculate
a time offset.
c) Record your location
- Waypoints: Save a waypoint for each photo taken (again, RoboGEO cannot interpolate
between points), making an effort to be consistent on whether the waypoint is taken
before or after the photo, or taking notes that will allow you to later identify waypointphoto pairs. Using waypoints is less dependable unless the time between photos is always
greater than the delay between a photo and the associated waypoint, or if you plan to
assign waypoints to photos manually. The Garmin GPSmap 60CS can store up to 1,000
waypoints.
- Tracklog: Specify a Record Method (time or distance) and Interval (in seconds or
kilometers). The interval should be short enough to accommodate the needed spatial
resolution and make it unlikely that two images would be assigned to the same point,
while long enough that the tracklog, which has memory for 10,000 entries, will not fill
before data can be downloaded to a computer. DO NOT save the tracklog. When you save
a tracklog on a Garmin GPS unit, the timestamps are lost, rendering them useless for
geocoding.
2. Prepare the photos for geocoding.

a) Preserve EXIF info in image files

- Geocoding is accomplished by comparing timestamps on images and GPS data; thus
all image files are required to contain capture time information, which is added by all
digital cameras when the photo is taken, regardless of format.
- However, certain editing software can strip metadata from non-raw formats (JPG, TIF,
PNG, BMP), so care should be taken to avoid these lossy operations, or save an original
as backup. It is recommended to make geocoding an early step in your workflow, before
any image editing, so that location data will be available in the EXIF header of the
original file and automatically embedded in any derivative files produced later.
b) Load your photos into RoboGEO
- Select the images or folder of images you wish to add. RoboGEO supports the following
formats: JPG, TIF, PNG, BMP, DNG, NEF, MRW, ERF and CR2.
- Check that an EXIF Time is displayed for each image, and that it makes sense.
3. Prepare RoboGEO settings.
a) Specify a camera GPS offset
- Access the setting: File Preferences Common Settings CameraOffset
- Double click the Current Value field. Click Yes to load the reference photo, or No to
enter the offset manually.
- If you choose Yes, RoboGEO will have you browse for the reference photo, open it, and
prompt you to enter the GPS time shown in the photo as HH:MM:SS.
b) Specify a time zone offset
- Access the setting: File Preferences Common Settings UtcTimeBias
- The default setting, UtcTimeBias set to 1, assumes the digital camera was set to the
same time zone as the computer on which you are geocoding your photos.
- For images taken in a different time zone than the computer, update the value as the
number of minutes that GMT is ahead (positive) or behind (negative) the cameras local
time.

World Time Zone Map (from Elemental Geosystems, by Robert Christopherson,, Prentice Hall)

c) Remove gaps in the tracklog

- Access the setting: File Preferences Tacklogs CombineTracklogSegments
- It is possible for the GPS unit to lose reception briefly at the instant a photo was taken,
which results in the photo falling between two tracklog segments and not being
geocoded.
- CombineTracklogSegments defaults to False. Set it to True if your tracklog contains
unintentional segmenting that keeps some images from being geocoded RoboGEO will
append all the tracklog segments into one on import from the GPS unit.
- If set to True, care should be taken to not include photos falling between intentional
tracklog segments, such as photos taken at camp between two days of fieldwork, or they
will be incorrectly geocoded.
d) Specify the datum
- Access the setting: File Preferences Common Settings Datum
Default value is 'WSG 1984'. Double click the 'Current Value' field to choose another datum from the
drop-down list.
4. Download the GPS data
a) Connect the GPS unit
- Simply attach the unit to your computers USB port and turn it on.
- If using the serial port, make sure the unit is set to transmit in the Garmin Protocol: Main
Menu Setup Interface Serial Data Format

b) Load data from the GPS unit

- Waypoints: Step #2 From GPS waypoints Get Waypoints (GPS)

When loaded from the GPS unit directly, waypoints can only be assigned to
photos manually. This can be avoided by first saving the waypoints as a GPX file
(see Part.4c)
Tracklogs: Step #2 From a GPS tracklog
The download will start automatically. Once loaded, the tracklog points can be reviewed
by clicking on the Tracklog tab.

c) Load data from existing files

- Regardless of if the file contains tracklogs or waypoints, it should be in the GPX (GPS
Exchange) format for import into RoboGEO. Both Garmins own MapSource software,
distributed with Garmin units, and the free DNRGarmin application, are capable of
downloading data from Garmin units and saving them to various formats, including GPX.
- Waypoints (manual): Step #2 From GPS waypoints Get Waypoints (GPX)
Waypoints (automatic): Step #2 From a waypoint file
- Tracklogs: Step #2 From a tracklog file
- If the data fails to import because of missing timestamps, it is most likely because the
time was not written in the proper format. This is a known issue with DNRGarmin
(waypoints and tracklogs) and MapSource (waypoints). With a true text editor such as the
free Notepad++ (not Microsoft Word), you can use a series of Find and Replace All
operations to rewrite the timestamps into the proper format.
Incorrect:

<cmt>19JAN0816:48:45</cmt>

Correct:

<time>20080119T16:48:45Z</time>
<time>YYYYMMDDTHH:MM:SSZ</time>

5. Update the EXIF metadata

a) Fill in additional fields
- If geocoding was successful, values for Latitude, Longitude and Altitude were assigned to
each image. You can manually add a Title (caption) and Direction (compass bearing)
by clicking on the appropriate cell in the image spreadsheet and typing in the new value.
b) Make the changes permanent
- Embed the new metadata information (location data and whatever you added in the
previous step) into the files themselves: Step #3 Write the location data to the EXIF
headers
- You are given a choice of either saving over the original image files, or saving copies,
with added EXIF metadata, to a new location. Updating the originals is recommended,
since the geocoded photos should be used in all future edits anyway to ensure that all
derivative files (ie. small for web or email) carry the embedded location data. If you
choose to save the geocoded images to a new location, consider a file naming convention
(such as adding the suffix _gps) so that geocoded images can always be differentiated.
- By embedding location data into the file itself, RoboGEO makes the results of your work
completely platform independent, available to the vast array of programs capable of
reading full EXIF info. Load the geocoded photo back into RoboGEO, and youll find
that all the data is immediately visible in the table.
6. Understand how to use relative paths in ArcGIS

a) Before we can export our results to a shapefile, it is important to understand how relative
paths operate in ArcGIS.
- You may have tried to share ArcGIS map files with others by copying an entire
project, folder structure intact, onto a CD, and discovered that ArcMap could not
locate any of the source data when the map files were opened from their new
location. This is because, by default, ArcMap saves absolute paths to the data. You
can, however, save the map with relative paths (see Part.8a).
- Relative paths can also be used for field-based hyperlinks, which allow access to
documents or webpages by clicking with the Hyperlink tool on features that
contain a file path or URL. While RoboGEO defaults to an absolute path to the
images in the shapefile it creates, the next section reveals tricks to save the
shapefile with relative paths. The only limitation is that all photos associated with
the shapefile be stored together in a single folder.
b) Relative path conventions
- To specify a path to a photo in the same folder as the map document, simply use
the photos name. To specify a path through a folder immediately below the maps
location in the folder structure, start the path with the folder name. Do not use a
\ or drive letter prefix. To specify a path to a document in a sibling folder, start
the path with ..\ and the folder name.
7. Create an ArcGIS shapefile

a)

Set shapefile properties

- Open the Export ESRI Shapefile pane: Step #3 Export a Shapefile
- Specify a Basename, which results in a shapefile name of the form Basename-points.
Choose an output folder, and select Points (photos) for the output type.
- EXIF/IPTC Properties: Select additional fields to include. The Description field
corresponds to the Title field in the RoboGEO table.

b)

Build relative paths

- Custom URL Attribute: It allows you to create an additional field, URL, that stores a
custom path. It can be either a fixed location, or, if you choose to append the filename, a
location for each image. While intended for online URLs, this is the setting you should
use to build custom, relative paths to the images.
- Customize the PATH field: By default, it will store the full path to the image. Go to File
Preferences Shapefiles ShapefileWriteFullPath, and set the value to False to
only store the filename.

c)

Once you are sure your settings are correct, click Export to generate the shapefile.

8. Create an ArcGIS map with relative-path hyperlinks

a) Setup a new map with relative paths

- Open a blank map document in ArcMap
- Navigate to File Map Properties Data Source Options, and choose Store relative
path names.
- Save the map. Make sure your images are in the correct location relative to the map file.
b) Prune the shapefile
- Add the point shapefile to ArcMap.
- Delete unnecessary fields from the Attribute Table. Keep in mind that this cannot be
undone.
c) Define the field-based hyperlinks
- Double click the layer in the Table of Contents Display tab
- Check Support Hyperlinks using field, click the drop-down arrow to select the field
with the paths you would like to link, and select Document for the hyperlink type.
- Click OK. Selecting the Hyperlink tool (lighting bolt) should make the point features turn
blue, meaning they have active links, and clicking on a point (when the lightning bolt
turns black) will open the linked photo in whatever program is set as the default image
viewer in your operating system.

d) Save the map

- Hyperlink settings are not saved to the data source (in this case, the shapefile);
they are stored in the map file. To preserve hyperlinks independent of a map file,
you can save the map layer to a layer file.