A little white box just arrived in the mail from Apple - the hugely reworked Aperture 3. It's installing now, and I'll make some comments over the next few days or so, as I get the hang of it. First impressions from the spec list in the press kit are good, there are tons of new features including - yay - local adjustments and proper geotagging.
Check out the Apple site here:
GPS Tagging
One cool feature, and I mean really cool, is the ability to GPS tag photos from a map using the Places feature. There is an option to export the metadata to the originals fines which is also fantastic. There is even a reverse Geotagging feature which translates GPS coords into Location, Country etc.
This is easy and intuitive to use, BUT...
On export the metadata is missing, and writing to original seems not to work either!
I have tried everything but the files that are exported, either as Masters or as Versions, do not contain the GPS coords. Even exporting the metadata as a txt file does not work - Lat/Long is missing.
:-(
I've contacted Apple to see what's up - this issue has been reported on the forums too, so it will be interesting to see what's going on.
More soon...
UPDATE
OK, I had a long chat with Apple and the GPS stuff does indeed work.
There are two aspects to this:
1. Aperture 3 will not write GPS data to a RAW Master - GPS is an EXIF field and the stated policy is not to write to any RAW files so as not to risk corrupting them. This seems at odds with the Write IPTC Metadata to Master until you realise that it's only writing the IPTC Metadata, not the EXIF data.
2. GPS data is written to exported files if the check box to do so is ticked. This check box is a bit obscure - File > Export version > Export Preset - bottom of the list is Edit. Choose this and you'll see the relevant dialog box. Some presets may not have the metadata box checked and this may be where the problem lies - although they all seem to have the box ticked with the exception of the PNG file formats. Why this did not work for me earlier remains a mystery.
I have now successfully exported both TIFFs and JPEGs which include GPS data which shows up in Bridge and Photo Mechanic.
Unfortunately Aperture 3 will not create DNG files so there is no way that I know of to embed GPS data in DNG files - a missed opportunity for Apple and this is something a lot of photographers will want to do if they use a DNG workflow - like I do.
If you use Aperture in conjunction with iWork (Keynote etc) the the GPS data is accessible to the other Apple apps. Keep it within Apple and you are sweet!
Comments
So the only way to export your hard work of geotagging all your photos is to export versions. That means the image gets reencoded, increased in size and lowerd in quality. Not an option at all ...