I received a GPS device last year for Christmas and I’ll admit I have become a bit overly geeky about tagging everything I can with location information - including my photos.

Still, leveraging the built-in GPS support from my camera to tag GPS location information directly as I shoot has allowed me to add value to my images. This information can also be used by many popular photo and mapping sites sites such as Google Maps, flickr, Picassa, etc. As excited as I am to have the added automation, for those of you without built-in GPS, there are still numerous devices and manual solutions out there.

With all this fancy new technology I still had a large number of images that I wanted to go back and add GPS information to. And as always I wanted to stay in Lightroom to do this. Luckily, Jeff Barnes has so graciously created a Geotagging plugin for Lightroom.

Simply install the plugin files and fire up Lightroom.

You will notice a new menu option located in the File menu:

To use the plugin, simply select the images(s) you wish to tag and select Geotag Photos… The dialog you are presented with allows you to tag GPS data in GPX format to your selection(s).

What’s a GPX file you ask … I have no idea. I just use any of the numerous converters out there to convert my GPS data.

Once complete, you will see the GPS details included in the Metadata panel:

If you select the arrow next to the GPS coordinates Lightroom will automatically generate a link to Google Maps and show you the location on a map.

I like to keep things simple, and to the point. For backlogging images Fred Barnes has a slick tool that I have enjoyed using since its release.

How are you using GPS location data in your workflow?

Until next time … happy shooting!

|Brandon Oelling