Motorola Droid – Learn Picasa and Google Photos!

Who took that Picture?

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Oct 062010

Do you and your travel partners both take pictures with different cameras? If you import them all to your computer and view them with Picasa, you may want to know who took which picture. It’s easy to do with Picasa’s picture properties panel.

We just returned from taking a cruise on Alaska’s Inside Passage. It was a family trip with 7 people from our extended family. Four of us were taking pictures. I used a Canon Digital Rebel, and sometimes my Droid cellphone. Jim used our Nikon Coolpix, and sometimes his Droid. Debbie used a Fujifilm Finepix. Jo Ellen used a Canon Powershot. I collected all the pictures from Jim’s and my cameras, plus several from Debbie and Jo Ellen.

Picasa’s Information Panel

You can see all sorts of information about any given picture by using Picasa’s Properties panel – indicated by the i – for Information – in the lower right corner of the screen. Click on any picture and then view the Properties panel by clicking on the i.

In the example above, you can see that this picture was taken with a Nikon Coolpix camera, which means that Jim took this one. The sample below shows that the picture was taken with a Canon Digital Rebel, which means that I took it.

Search by Camera Type

What if you wanted to see all the photos taken with a particular camera? That information is searchable. To see all the pictures taken by our Droids, I just type Droid in the search box. Now the only pictures I’m seeing are ones found with that search. It will find all pictures with Droid in the properties, as well as any that have Droid as part of the caption, filename, or tag.

In my particular case, both Jim and I took some pictures with our Droids, so I also used the Tag feature to identify the ones taken by each of us, using a tag like ‘pix-by-jim.’

Photo Properties on Picasa Web Albums

I’ve uploaded some of our Alaska pictures to a Web Album, you can see them at 2010 Alaska Cruise. Some of the properties that Picasa shows you are also viewable on Picasa Web Albums. Just click on any picture, then click on the link for ‘more info’ over in the right sidebar.

GPS Properties

Notice the properties of Latitude and Longitude. Any of the pictures taken with our Droid cell phones are automatically Geotagged with the Latitude and Longitude because the Droid also happens to be a GPS receiver! All pictures that are geotagged will show up in the map on the right sidebar.

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Geotagging

Using Tags aka Keywords

Single Picture View

Searching for Pictures

Upload Photos to the Web

Automatically Geotag Pictures with Droid

Photo, Sharing Photos 3 Responses »

Jun 162010

First, just what is geotagging? It’s attaching the lattitude and longitude coordinates to a picture, a .jpg file, so it can be placed on a map in the location where it was taken. When a photo is geotagged, these coordinates are part of the ‘metadata’ embedded in the file itself, just like the date and time where it was taken.

Picasa displays Geotagged pictures in ‘Places’

In the screenshot of Picasa below, you can tell which pictures have been geotagged by the little red balloon icon in the lower right of the picture. If you open up the ‘Places’ pane, you will see the markers on the map. Click on a marker, and you’ll see the picture.

We all take for granted that the date and time of a photo is stored with the photo. Someday (soon) we will also take for granted that the place of a photo is also automatically stored with the picture.

Manual Geotagging

In previous articles I’ve written about how you can manually geotag a photo. They’ve, made it pretty easy, but it’s still something that takes a bit of time and thought. For me, I’m just too lazy to make the effort. But, if it can be done automatically, now that’s a different story! I’d love to be able to see all my travel pictures pinned to the spot on the map where they were taken. And, now I can as long as I take the picture with my Droid cell phone.

How Droid does Geotagging

I have the Motorola Droid cellphone from Verizon. Other devices have this capability, but Droid is what I know. You see, in addition to being a phone, and a camera, the Droid is also a GPS receiver. It knows exactly where it is, so it can stamp the pictures taken with that information if you turn the setting on.

You’ll find the setting on the camera app. Touch the menu option: then ‘Settings’ and finally ‘Store Location’ and touch ‘Yes.’ From now on, when you take a picture with the Droid, it will include the location. When you import that onto your computer and view it with Picasa, you will see the little red balloon and, if you open the Places pane, you’ll see the picture in place. Here’s a little video:

I’ve even been known to snap a photo at a location when I’m not really taking it for the picture, I’m just taking it for the location. I can later use that picture on the map to navigate back to the same spot.

Other methods to Auto-Geotag

The Droid isn’t the only device that will auto-geotag photos. Other cell phone/cameras have a similar capability and you can also buy SD cards to Geotag. If you use any of these methods, please leave a comment and tell us about it.

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Geotagging