I’ve played around with this for a couple of years now, but I’ve only switched to the Mac in the last year and geotagging has been trying my patience ever since. I used to use Trips and Pics ont eh PC, but the software doesn’t run on the Mac OS. Of course a query to the software manufacturer merely resulted in “Just run it under Windows on Bootcamp”. Idiots. Why exactly would I want to pollute my new Mac with the very thing I am trying to get away from?
So I bumbled around a bit and had a few false starts.
The first problem was that the Pharos iGPS500 isn’t recognized by the Mac and the driver they provide…simply doesn’t work. In trying to get my vessel navigation charts functional again I discovered this rather large problem. A nice person reworked the driver for me so the GPS would be recognized, but the data logging function never quite worked right. The GPS works just fine for navigation, but it isnt’ great for the track recording I used to do when out doing some photography.
So I wandered across HoudaGeo and thought this might be my salvation…except it wouldn’t work with the Pharos GPS at all.
So then I discovered the QStarz-1300s, the size of a keychain, and the ability to just clip it on the camera while out and about. Nifty! So I wander about, take my photos, and then come home and tag them. Works liek a charm, the only downside I just discovered is that it only tags those photos and discards the rest of the track information….hmmm…not perfect.
Then last week I found Photolinker. A neat program that seems to replace Trips and Pics and go a few steps further. It not only imports the entire track, tags raw files, and shows things on a map…but it can export gpx files for Routebuddy or other software, and it can import old gpx files too. The only downside is that it can’t actually delete the files from the GPS unit and because it’s only a receiver, there is no way to do this with the QStarz without software control.
Enter the last part of the equation. BT747. This little freebie recognizes the QStarz1300 and allows you to control the basic functions of it. It will let you change the record frequency, delete tracks etc…. in actuality, this little program just might do you well enough to get by without Photlinker, but Photolinker does have some other bonuses that allow you to do a bit more in depth tagging of EXIF data within the photos.
So the workflow now goes like this.
1. Wander about and take photos or just go on a hike.
2. Download photos into a folder (don’t import into iPhoto yet!!)
3. Import track information from GPS unit
4. Drag and drop your photo folder into the sidebar in Photolinker
5. Tag photos and fix any location data or add anything you want to the tags and write the tags
6. Import folder into iPhoto
7. Delete track files using BT747
And it works perfectly!