Geotagging with Linux

“What you’re going to learn may not be the most sophisticated
way to geotag but has all the characteristics to be immediately
useful to all LXF readers who want to get started with geotagging
because it doesn’t require any GPS equipment. We’re using free
software that works without hassle on any Linux distribution
around, and way it collects coordinates is so simple that you could
delegate it to everybody who can type and handle a mouse. It also
has the benefit of being faster than other GUIs, is easily
extensible to add other types of taggings, and it covers all the
geotagging needs of most non-professional photographers.

“If you’re ready, let’s start looking how to geotag pictures
with Firefox, its Minimap extension and just a little bit of Bash
scripting, using a few shots from wonderful Sardinia as source
material. We’re going to use Firefox to create one text file
containing the coordinates of all the places shown in our
photographs, and another plain text file that associates each shot
to a place. This is all the information we need to get one simple
Bash script to write the location of the shot inside each JPEG
file, in a standard format that any geo-capable software can
understand.

“Trick question before continuing: which location should you
geotag into a picture? The one of what you see in the picture, or
the one from which the picture was shot? In this tutorial we use
the second criterion, but there is no single right answer, really.
You decide. And because we’re data masochists, we’ll note that in
either case you should also geotag the orientation of the shot
(looking north, looking south etc) if you really don’t want to miss
any geographical information.”

Complete
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