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
With increasing DSLR camera sales and disk spaces, the RAW image format has become an undisputed standard for ambitious photographers. The non-destructive editing paradigm that came with it is so common now that it seems strange that there ever was a time when you had to keep physical copies of both the master image and each edit (like a BW or touched-up version). The following is a shortlist of noteworthy RAW image processing applications – not an in-depth review, though.
(Actually, RAW processor is almost an anachronistic term as today RAW editing has become a feature of most imaging applications.)
A noteworthy geotagging application is HoudahGeo by Houdah Software. It has an extraordinarily tidy user interface that comfortably leads you through the three main steps of geotagging: picking images, merging geodata and creating output files. But is ist just tidy on the outside? We tested the latest version HoudahGeo 2.2.5, released only yesterday.
HoudahGeo
The “Geotagging and the Mac” review series is about comparing applications on common ground. Therefore, we will use the same test scenario for all the reviews and expect the same results, no matter what fancy features an application may offer on top. The scenario is independent of the operating system, so you could likewise use it for Windows apps.
Apple has just released iLife ’09, introducing geotagging as an iPhoto feature called ‘Places’. As usual, Apple is not so much a pioneer of new technologies but rather adapts to popular trends that have reached a serious momentum. So it is worth having a closer look at geotagging and the available software for the Mac.
Apple's iPhoto displays locations of images as pins on a map.