I always geotag my photos. I hate looking at a photo, be it professional or personal and having to ask myself "Where was that taken?" I've been spoiled by iPhone photos – the geotagging is built right in.

To date, I've done the tagging manually in Aperture or Lightroom. A mini-resolution for 2016 was to put an end to that madness and get a more automated system. I settled on Geotag Photos Pro 2, an app for iOS and Android.

Summary

Geotag Photos Pro 2 does exactly what I need. And at a mere $7.99 it's a fraction of the price of a dedicated GPS unit. It has a simple interface, crates standard GPX track logs, and very importantly integrates with cloud services. As a bonus, I don't need a separate piece of equipment in my bag.

At the start of a photo shoot, I fire up the app, create a trip and the app tracks GPS coordinates in the background. Sensitivity and sampling rate are configurable. Once a trip is complete, the app saves a GPX track log. If you connect Geotag Photos to a cloud service, the track log is automatically uploaded. I use Dropbox. iCloud and Google Drive are also supported. 

On the backend, I am running the Dropbox application on my Macs so I can load the GPX track log directly from within Lightroom's Map module. Mere moments later, all my photos are geotagged. The GPX track log is standard and should work with any asset manager that supports tagging based on GPX logs. Geotag Photos also has a desktop app to auto-tag photos if your asset manager doesn't support GPX logs.

Using Geotag Photos Pro

The application is very intuitive and easy to setup. I first linked the applcation with my Dropbox in the Cloud Services tab of the Settings page. I then tweaked the General settings slightly for higher GPS accuracy and to automatically upload the GPX trip log. Set and forget. 

Next is running the app. At the beginning of a photo trip, I start up the app and double check my camera's time and date are the same as my iPhone's time and date. Set the logging interval to something reasonable for the trip. For example, a shorter interval might make sense for a photo walk where your position will change more often. A longer interval is advantageous to battery life and is a good choice if you're out for an entire day of shooting.

Tap the start button and leave the app running in the background. Geotag Photos Pro is pretty smart and doesn't continually sap battery power. I've taken a few multi-hour trips with it running and battery life hasn't been an issue in the least. Once the trip is finished, stop recording, save the trip and the GPX track log is automatically uploaded to the cloud (assuming you've configured Geotag Photos do so).

Once back in the studio I have a GPX track log waiting for me, immediately accessible from my Mac. In Lightroom's Map module, I pair the GPX track log with the photos from the trip. In a few clicks, all my photos are geotagged and I'm on to the next step in my workflow.

I'll have another post next week with the Lightroom steps to load and use a GPX track log in the Map module.