Microsoft Pro Photo Tools: Geotagging Sans GPS?

Geotagging by Microsoft

Microsoft’s two new products, Expression Media 2 and Pro Photo Tools, aim to help photographers manage their digital photos in a new way using location data, a process known as geotagging which was available previously only to highly technical people.

The two products are designed to reduce the amount of time required by photographers to manage and organize large collections of photos and other digital media, including geotagging functionality.

Pro Photo Tools is free software from Microsoft, making geotagging available for all photographers. It can be downloaded from the Microsoft Pro Photo Web site.

Expression Media 2 is a digital assets management (DAM) software and it will cost you $199; it competes directly with Lightroom ($299) and Aperture ($199). According to Josh Weisberg, director of the Rich Media Group at Microsoft, “these two products really simplify the process of geotagging and organizing digital photos by location, even without a GPS device.”

You’re supposed to be able to gather location information from a variety of sources and apply it to the metadata in your images, drag and drop images on a map, determine location names based on GPS coordinates, and assign GPS data to images that are missing it.

[Site: Microsoft.com]

Published by Chris Malinao

Chris teaches Lightroom as workflow software to photography students at the FPPF, Federation of Philippine Photographers Foundation. He also teaches smartphone photography.