I really like the extensions and tools Jeffrey has developed over the years: his input helped me tailor Lightroom to a perfect fit for my needs in most areas.

However, he admits himself that his GPS plugin is some kind of a workaround as it uses something he calls “shadow data”. So, instead of storing geotags inside the actual files, you will have to export them first to create a durable archive (that is what I call an infringement of the “travelling standards” paradigm). To me, this alone is a no-go, as you never know how long Lightroom is going to be around and whether you will be able to migrate this shadow data to any future imaging application. That would be lot of work down the drain…

Secondly, the plugin only supports logfile-based workflows. With my Garmin handset I often experience quite an offset between the measured and the correct location. If I want to put that right, I need some visual aid like Google Maps to quickly drag a location pin to the right spot.

HoudahGeo is my first choice as it fits nicely into the first step of my Lightroom workflow: I geotag my images before importing them into LR. This is my workflow: copy to harddisk > reduce to keeps > geotag > import into LR > rest of metadata > development > done.

I recommend you have a look at my first geotagging post to get my drift. There is also some information in the second post “Useful Tools for Geotagging” that you might find helpful.

Thanks,
Klaus

EDIT: There was the question about my workflow, why and how I reduce my RAW files to keeps outside Lightroom.

Why: As I geotag before importing into LR, I prefer to have less files to deal with. And I don’t want LR to carry out time-consuming DNG conversion on images I won’t keep.

How: You may of course always use your Mac’s Quicklook function (spacebar) for sorting out your images. But that has the disadvantage that after you delete a file, the marker jumps back up to directory level and you would have to scroll back down to see the next image.

The usual suspect would be Preview: just drag your import folder on the Preview icon to use its browsing function. But I find it a bit slow (maybe that’s because it first reads all files).

For me, the ideal solution is using a stand-alone viewer like Xee or ViewIt. These viewers read images very fast and they allow you to delete files in fullscreen mode while maintaining the position in the file order. ViewIt is very similar to Xee, but it has one great advantage: while Xee only pre-loads one image, ViewIt keeps at least three in its preview memory (forward and back) which makes eliminating much faster.

Screenshot link for plugin… http://regex.info/blog/2008-10-29/979

K.

Actually not. I discovered it’s the First name + Last name of the “Me” card in Address book, because it has an accent in my first name there, and not in Mac OS user name.

However, you would have to rely on iPhone always having perfect satellite/WiFi reception and on a perfect sync with your camera’s clock. In my experience, this remains an issue and therefore requires a second look at the result – which is why HoudahGeo remains very useful even for GeoLogTag users.

Finally, I am notoriously suspicious when it comes to metadata integrity: many applications wreak havoc on existing metadata when inserting geotags. I don’t know how well GeoLogTag performs, but I would definitely recommend testing its results (e.g. by running the “reading all metadata” script from my “ExifTool and the Automator” post).

Klaus

However since a couple of weeks my geotagging workflow became a lot simpler. I’m using my iPhone 3G to track my position during my photoshoots and afterwards the app I use (GeoLogTag) geotags the photos over WiFi. All I need to do, is configure the folder with the photos as a shared folder.

I’m still a big fan of HoudahGeo and I would recommend it to anyone who uses a separate GPS data logging device, but if you have an iPhone I would recommend GeoLogTag.

http://www.galarina.eu/GeoLogTag/Home.html