Geotagging your photos means adding location data to the image so they can be displayed on a map. Be aware that doing so might reveal sensitive information you’d rather keep secret like your home address.
You can of course remove location data when you export images, like I did with the images in this post.
Anyway, here is how I geotag my photos.
For photos I’ve already taken, I use Google Timeline and export it from my Google account using Google Takeout. You’ll get a rather large “Recent.json” file out of that. To convert that file into the GPX format usable by Lightroom Classic, use this Python script which I’ve already covered in this post.
When I go out with my camera now I use the Anrdoid app, OpenTracks. It’s a free app you can grab from f-droid, but there’s also a paid version on the Google Play Store if you want to support the developer. You can also use GPSLogger, a free app that has the advantage of being able to save your .gpx files to Dropbox or Google Drive.
On iOS, the myTracks app appears to do a similar job but I can’t test it. Please comment if you have tried it or know of decent alternatives.
To geotag your photos in Lightroom Classic, the Adobe documentation on the subject is excellent. Once you’ve opened the Map Module and done it once it’s easy to do again. When you geotag your photos, the Map Module will look like this.
There is also Jeffrey’s “Geoencoding Support” Plugin for Lightroom that I’ve used for years but maybe it’s because of changes to LrC in recent years, it’s gotten really slow for me. I usually use the built in LrC functionality in the Maps module now.
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@donncha On iOS, I can recommend CoMaps or Organic Maps, both free, to record your track while out shooting. Just export a GPX file and load it into Lightroom. No Google, no cloud, no surveillance.
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@donncha ooh, want!
@stephtara it works really well, most of the time.Timezones can be a PITA when I forget to change the time on my camera. Plus those photos usually need to be tagged separately with the hours adjusted.
@donncha @stephtara would it help to leave your camera in UTC and then adjust on import?
@dennisguse @stephtara Yep. You can adjust the time difference in Lightroom Classic, but it just means selecting the foreign photos separately. It becomes obvious quickly when you see photos showing over Greenland that should have been in Vancouver… LOL.
@dennisguse oh, I see you've been developing #OpenTracks! Thank you for a great app. I use it every day I'm out with my camera.I have noticed a bug with the language settings. App language is set to English but the interface is in Irish, which is impressive TBH, but it can be annoying as my Irish is really rusty.@stephtara
@donncha @stephtara is your phone set to Irish? Is the language set in OpenTracks? And finally what Android version of Android are you using?
@dennisguse oops, sorry for not replying earlier. My phone is set to English (Ireland). I set the language to various forms of English, and I'm running Android 15 on a fully up to date Samsung S23U Ultra. When I set the language to English, the UI changes to English, but if I exit and go back in, I see Irish again.
@donncha can you set the language in OpenTracks yourself?
@dennisguse yeah, that's what I meant when I said setting the language to English. The language setting in the app stays, but the UI is still in Irish. Bizarre. Screenshots will show what I'm seeing.
@donncha can you set the app-specific language via Android? And with a different language as well?FYI this functionality is provided by Android itself. IIRC since Android 13.
@dennisguse yep, I have it set to English (United States) in both but the UI is still Irish.
@dennisguse I removed Irish from the system languages and it now shows in English. I wondered if it was because I didn't have the US version of English installed, so I installed it and Irish again, with Irish right at the end. The UI changed back to Irish! ARGH.
@dennisguse out of curiosity, I added German below Irish, but the app still used Irish. When I deleted Irish, the app changed to German. When I moved German up above English (United States) the app still showed in German!
@donncha can you reproduce this with other applications? And also on another phone?And can you try to set the language in OpenTracks to system default?The actual language resolution is done by Android itself and OpenTracks just uses the one it get’s from Android.On my Android 13, English (Ireland) is showing in English.
@donncha and is setting the country to Ireland acutally bringing any value? Does it change something in Android?