With the latest version 3.5, Google’s Picasa for Mac has finally emerged from Beta. As Google is renowned for visionary solutions and as the program very much mirrors the functionality of iPhoto, it is worth having a closer look at its geotagging capacity. At first glance, it looks very well integrated, but – as with our previous posts – we are looking for a proper workflow support and future-proof metadata handling.
Google Picasa
I love the idea behind MobileMe: to have a virtual desktop with all my addresses, messages and calendar entries up-to-date, when working somewhere else or travelling places: Sync Central with all the right tools whenever and whereever you need them. And most definitely the best design and usability of all. So despite a number of complaints about MobileMe’s sluggish behaviour or other accessability issues the advantages are overwhelming… Or are they?
If you take a lot of pictures while travelling, you will come across the timezone issue sooner or later. What would you set your camera’s clock to? UTC? Local timezone? Local timezone plus Daylight Saving Time? Even if you opt for UTC – like I do – you would still want to have some reference to local time.
New York City lies in the EST (Eastern Standard Time, UTC-5) zone, also known as EDT when DST rules (UTC-4).
Unfortunately, there is a big metadata issue, due to the fact that the predominant EXIF standard does not provide for timezones in the timestamp tags. This may get particularly confusing if your workflow includes geotagging. Here is a suggestion how to set up a workaround using ExifTool and Automator.
The first articles for this blog are currently being written. Publication is planned for the first half of February 2009.
So stay tuned!
– EDIT 27 FEB –
Almost there, just some proof-reading to do :-)