JOSM/Plugins/Photo Geotagging

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The plugin Photo Geotagging is used to write latitude and longitude information to the EXIF header of jpg files. Geotagged images can be displayed at their position by JOSM and other software without reference to any gpx file.

Photo Geotagging

How to use

First, you have to synchronize your photos with a gpx track, such that they are displayed as small icons on the main area of JOSM. To permanently save this position in the meta information header (EXIF) of the image files, right click on the image layer and select Write coordinates to image header. Then a list of photos is displayed, for you to confirm.

Backups

You are advised to have backups for your images, before geotagging them. Nonetheless, the plugin also offers an option to do backups. (The backup files have the extension *.jpg_ and are put in the same folder, the images are in.)

File modification time (mtime)

Writing to the image header changes the file modification time of the images. (The time that is shown in your file manager.) This can be undesirable, as the original time and date can no longer be used for lookup, searching and sorting. To circumvent this, you can set the mtime to a reasonable value after the change to the image file has been done.

You have the option to

  • change the file's mtime to the gps time. If you correlated the images to a gps file, this should be exactly the time, the photo was taken.
  • restore the old mtime. This way, the mtime of the file remains unchanged.

Technical Details

The plugin writes the following EXIF tags: GPSLatitudeRef, GPSLatitude, GPSLongitudeRef, GPSLongitude, GPSTimeStamp, GPSDateStamp, GPSAltitudeRef, GPSAltitude, GPSImgDirection.

Known problems

It has been reported, that the plugin does not work with photos created by SONY DSC-HX5V (bugreport).

Try a sample image: If it is correctly geocoded, then your camera model is not affected by this bug.