Feature Request: Geocoding Improvements

[Framon]

Thank you very much for your research, Greyfox. Your interventions on the forum are numerous and always very useful.

As I said before, Photo Mechanic's "reverse geocoding" does not allow you to work in batches if the photos were not taken in the same place. Probably a major difficulty...
I would be happy if there was a keyboard shortcut to open this tool.

In the meantime, being retired, I have enough time to do without it...

[Greyfox]

You are right but it would be so much simpler to be able to do the reverse geocode for a whole batch of images without them having been taken in the same place.

It could be quite useful for some, I don't know about simpler, but as indicated in the posts I linked to earlier, at a price for the Google service many users would not want to pay.. Here is some more information about that. https://developers.google.com/maps/d...ge-and-billing

[brajaq]

I agree with Framon.

[Framon]

You are right but it would be so much simpler to be able to do the reverse geocode for a whole batch of images without them having been taken in the same place.

[Greyfox]

Thanks for the reminder, Greyfox.
Of course, it is possible to delete the IPTC data if it is incorrect, but it is still quite tedious.

If you use a saved metadata preset that blanks the 5 IPTC fields that contain the Reverse Geocode information you can select multiple images, select the "Remove Location fields" and click on apply (or press Enter) and it's done. Not really tedious.

[Framon]

Thanks for the reminder, Greyfox.
Of course, it is possible to delete the IPTC data if it is incorrect, but it is still quite tedious.
The trick proposed by dwest4277 is a solution but not worth the investment for me. I will continue to use the reverse geocoding as it exists but a shortcut would still be a good intermediate solution

[Greyfox]

,,As it stands, if you choose "Reverse geocoding" for a batch of images, all of them will receive the same address. There is no individual calculation.However, once this process has been performed, it is no longer possible to go back or cancel it.

Reverse geocode in the case of ACDSee is simply written into IPTC Tags, and can easily be removed from the Properties, Metadata tab, IPTC section.

In regards to being able to apply reverse geocode to batches of images, you might be interested to read the posts in the forum thread https://forum.acdsee.com/forum/main/...-location-name, particularly the posts #11 and #13 in relation to lookup costs.

[Framon]

Let me come back to this old thread to give my opinion.

As it stands, if you choose "Reverse geocoding" for a batch of images, all of them will receive the same address. There is no individual calculation.
However, once this process has been performed, it is no longer possible to go back or cancel it.
In order to be sure to get the right addresses for each photo, it is better to do it one by one, which is quite tedious.
As I wrote earlier, Photo Mechanic has the same problem.

An intermediate solution would be to be able to create a keyboard shortcut to get directly to the "reverse geocoding".
However, I am afraid that if this "change request" is proposed, it will take a long time to get it.

[Greyfox]

joephoto

I suspect you are looking for a batch type process where a group of images could be selected and reverse geocoded based on the GPS co-ordinates, maybe without the need to actually show their location on the map..

Perhaps that might be done with a selected group of images in a similar manner to the current embed metadata process, where the dialog at the end of the process shows the number processed and the number successfully reverse geocoded.

Presumably the routine would have to handle situations where some individual images in the group had no GPS location co-ordinates, or where the GPS co-ordinates could not be reverse geocoded to a local address, as might be the case where photos were taken from a boat out at sea), or where Google has yet to have its maps for an area linked to local addresses, and also perhaps photos taken in countries where there are no Google maps.

I would be relatively sure that many users would not be happy with a summary that said 100 images processed, 22 reverse geocoded successfully. 78 failed, and would want to know why the ireverse geocoding failed on individual images, so the user perhaps would need to be able to list the individual image by their filename, and a reason for each failure..

But I have a suspicion that the reverse geocoding in ACDSee may be part of the google mapping api itself, and there may be no provision in the api to do batch reverse geocoding.

Whatever the case, there is no guarantee your suggestion for product improvement would be picked up from the forum post, so I would suggest you raise a Support Request at https://www.acdsee.com/en/support/ setting out your proposed improvement. At least that would ensure it gets some attention.

[Framon]

I don't know where the difficulty lies in reverse geocoding a batch of images that were not taken in the same location, or else all the photos will be geotagged based on the GPS data of the first image.
What I can say is that with PhotoMechanic (used by many press photographers), the problem is similar.

Maybe we will get an explanation from the developers.

[joephoto]

WRT Geocoding multiple images: I'd like to see improvements here too.
For example, if I select 50 images all in CA and reverse geocode, then I'd like to have either:
#1: Each image geocoded individually. (Preferred option!)
#2: Scope the geocoding -- geocode all the images with the same Country and State, but don't set (or modify) City and Location.

Maybe even in the Save/Cancel confirmation dialog - allow me to edit -- have a checkbox by each field to control if something will get written to the images or not.
Also in the Save/Cancel dialog, highlight any fields that would have multiple values (SanFrancisco vs LA for instance).

[mala]

I am heavily using (reverse) geocoding. ACDsee goes into the right direction but makes the process very inefficient. Here are some suggestions:

• Select multiple pictures/directories and allow automatic reverse geocoding for all images that have GPS coordinates. As it is I have to select every single image and do several clicks to do reverse geocoding. If I know a few images will result in the same address I can do this for all those images but it is still a VERY LABORIOUS task taking tens or actually hundreds of hours for the images I need to do this. If automated it could take minutes and this could be included as part of the import workflow.
• On the map there are "Save All" and "Reverse Geocode" buttons. One has to actually reach to the mouse and click on those buttons to activate them. There are no keyboard shortcuts to activate them.
• ACDsee lacks the option to geocode images, i.e. add GPS coordinates of addresses that were manually added to the metadata of images. I understand that no precise GPS location will be possible with this approach but at least give us that option.
• I often accidentally move a 'balloon' on the map. There doesn't seem to be a way to reverse such accidents. Instead I have to discard all edits.
• When I select an image it shows up as a yellow balloon on the map. However, as soon as I zoom in that yellow balloon disappears and instead I am shown a bunch of red balloons with different locations. I have no idea in which red balloon the picture is located, i.e. to which balloon I need to zoom in unless I click on the image again. This is rather inefficient.

It's good to see ACDsee had reverse geocoding but it is very inefficient and it also completely missed geocoding (converting addresses to GPS coordinates)

Please like the post if this is something you would like as well.