Export locations to Google Earth, etc.

[jch2103]

It would be useful to be able to export a group of images with locations to Google Earth or a GIS system.
NOT A HIGH PRIORITY!

The goal would be to be able to export a group of geo-tagged images to a KML/KMZ file which could be opened in Google Earth or a GIS system. The user could then see the entire group of images/locations and manipulate their display in Google Earth. (I thought I remembered being able to drag and drop geo-coded images into GE, but it doesn't work; maybe I mis-remembered).

This can be done now with GeoSetter (hence not high priority for IMatch) but it would be more convenient to be able to do this from within IMatch. This is especially so if reviewing images for missing /inaccurate location coordinates.

[Mario]

Such a functionality can be done easily in a script. If you need this, why don't you write a script which exports the coordinates in the required format?
When I remember correctly, IMatch 3 has a Google Earth locator script which produces KML. This could be used as a starting point.
But if GeoSetter does it anyway...

[Mario]

I'll cranked up a small Export module, just for q bit of fun. Did take only an hour or so. A bit of relief from hunting bugs... 

The export script exports the dropped objects into a KML file and then optionally opens it in the associated application (e.g. Google Earth). Works quite well and I will include it as a standard Export module in version 5.1.16 and later.

It's pretty basic, uses the Title tag for the Name and the description tag for the description and puts all files into one KML Folder. Check it out and if you want more functionality, add a feature request.

[jch2103]

Thanks; that was quick! Glad to have been able to provide the opportunity for a brief bit of distraction. 

I'll be sure to check it out and give feedback when it arrives.

[Mario]

Since I'm mostly fixing bugs (and weird ones) a bit of relief was welcome. This is how the output of the script looks in Google Earth:



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[jch2103]

Good! That's better looking than the output from GeoSetter, which uses a larger thumbnail and also (unless you tell it not to) adds a file name label in a too-large font size.

[Mario]

It's gotten even better!

I've had some fun with this     and decided to add a new method to the Application class which allows script programmers to create ZIP files directly from within an IMatch script.

Once this method was available (easy, because IMatch uses ZIP files for many purposes, e.g. email) I could not only create KML files, but also KMZ files! And this allowed me to combine the KML file with other files, e.g. thumbnails for each file exported to the KML.

IMatch scripting is so darn powerful. I guess I will add a dialog box to the script so users can use variables to define the values to use for the title and description in the popup. This makes this new export module really useful.

Currently I use the metadata tag title and description, plus the thumbnail image IMatch already has in the KMZ file. The results are promising:



Tomorrow is bug-fixing again. But maybe another 30 minutes to finish this cool new script for 5.1.16.
And now, it's off to the Dr. Who party    


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[lenmerkel]

And now, it's off to the Dr. Who party    

And yes - bow ties are cool! 

[Ferdinand]

And yes - bow ties are cool! 

Yes, but ONLY if you tie them yourself.  Self-tie bows are a sign of sophistication, whereas pre-tied bows are kitsch. 

[DigPeter]

And yes - bow ties are cool! 

Yes, but ONLY if you tie them yourself.  Self-tie bows are a sign of sophistication, whereas pre-tied bows are kitsch.

So right

[Mario]

No bow ties anymore...

[busbahnhof]

Merry Christmas!

Now with 130,000 pictures in the database...

I already created some locations in the map module. ONe question came up: Where are the locations stored? Is it possible to export only these locations? Right now, all locations of marked pictures are exported.

Best regards,
Chris

[Mario]

IMatch allows you to create locations in the Map Panel. Locations make it easy to navigate to a specific location on a map, or to quickly assign images to a 'known' location (like a studio). IMatch can also use locations to automatically add coordinates, location data etc. via a Metadata Template, during import of files or later. A big time-saver for many users.
IMatch stores the locations you create in the IMatch settings database.

Google Maps cannot import IMatch locations.
But when you assign the coordinates of a location to a file, and then make this file available for Google, you can use the coordinates of that file to create whatever location-equivalent Google Maps supports.

[busbahnhof]

Switch to German, because I am not sure if my explanation will meet what I want to say ;-)

Ich weiß, dass man die GPS-Standorte der ausgewählten Bilder exportieren kann. Allerdings nur das. Wenn es um Standorte geht, die man in IMatch einrichten kann, dann sind dies ja spezielle Orte, nicht nur für eine Handvoll Bilder. Man verbindet was mit diesen Orten, man hat einen ganzen Abend in Google Maps diesen Ort gesucht, nachdem man vor 30 Jahren ein Farbdia aufgenommen hat. Daher möchte ich diese Standorte nicht mehr so schnell verlieren. Deswegen habe ich nach einer Möglichkeit gesucht, diese Standorte außerhalb IMatch zu sichern. Das geht mit einem vertretbaren Aufwand, wenn man alle Bilder markiert und die Standorte exportiert. Allerdings habe ich dann alle GPS-Daten von allen markierten Bildern exportiert. Wenn ich davon ausgehe, dass ich 2/3 der Bilder mit einem Standort versehen kann, dann wären das aktuell GPS-Daten von knapp 87.000 Bilder.

Daher auch die Frage, ob es möglich wäre, entweder nur die gespeicherten Standorte zu sichern oder die eindeutigen (Englisch: unqiue) Standorte aller Bilder zu speichern (also keine Duplikate).

Vielen Dank.

Grüße
Chris

[Mario]

This has never been requested and I doubt that there will be much use for that for other users.
Let's see how many +1 this gets.


Since Locations are an IMatch concept, I don't even know which format I should use for the export. XML? JSON? text?
Locations contain a lot of IMatch specific data, in addition to a GPS coordinate pair.
When you lookup the coordinates of an IMatch location in Google Maps, you get the same data. Or not?
I don't even know if GM supports a concept like locations. Never tried.

I don't know how many locations you have (from telemetry I know that most users have between 0 and 5) but it should not take that long to enter the coordinates in Google Maps to create whatever GM uses as "locations"?

[busbahnhof]

If other users don't care about their data and want to spend a lot of time rstoring them, their thing.

But I am learning from my data losses in the past (not IMatch) to have a proper backup of data that once created a lot of work to get. If there are no more users in need of such a feature, I am totally fine. I just wanted to bring up this idea. But in this case, when I know there is no way around, I can life with that. Even if you say, you can find location info in this or that file stored in the depth of the IMatch file system, and in case of emergency, I can extract this data out of this file, I am more than fine with it.

Right now I have 35 different locations. And I guess that there will be some 50 more when going through the 130,000 pictures.

As far as I see how locations are basically defined are
- name
- longitude
- latitude

All other information from the definition window are optional in my view (but that's only my view). A text file with these basic information would be great. Maybe these information can be exported by a coded app, I don't know, and I maybe can't figure it out the next years :-)

I tested some of the locations all over the world. I set them in IMatch with Bing/Openstreetmap, took the coordinates into Google Maps and they match.