Create POI(s) by importing geo-tagged Image(s)

[pstn]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

We are using qmapshack to plan long distance cycling events. Scouting for road conditions, supply opportunities and potential safety issues are an integral part of planning for these events. In the process of scouting, we take a lot of geo-tagged pictures to note the results. It would be an immense help if there was an automated way to create POIs at the location of said geo-tag that contain the respective image.

Describe the solution you'd like

Have a dedicated batch import button/menu entry to automatically generate POIs from images imported from disk.

Describe alternatives you've considered

Manually create POIs at the location of the geo-tags and add the image to it.

Give a reason why someone else should spend time on that request

Pretty much all smartphones that I know off can create geo-tagged images, so this feature could be helpful to many people that want to do any sort of scouting in the real world and link it back to their maps easily and efficiently

Additional context

I think the most ubiquitous geo-taggable image format supported by all kinds of devices is JPEG, so that is probably the only format that is strictly necessary to support.

[tumic0]

You may have a look at GPXSee, a QMapShack alternative, that already has this feature.

[mitxel-m]

A quick and easy way to do this is with exiftool, a command line application for linux, mac and win. Here is ExifTool main page. In linux I have installed it from my distribution repos.

With this utility you can generate a GPX file containing a waypoint for each geotagged photo, each waypoint can contain a link pointing to the original full size photo file. This is convenient to save space and fast to handle.

Basically exiftool reads the exif data, then uses a template to generate a text that is redirected to write a GPX file. The best is that it runs on the command line so you can put it in a script, and the template can be customized to your needs (e.g. use a personal icon symbol,add comments, etc).

Example

This command generates a gpx with waypoints for all your geotagged photos placed in the folder \myunit\myfolder\myphotos (and all its subfolders).

exiftool -r -p \myunit\myfolder\gpx_wpt_img.fmt \myunit\myfolder\myphotos > \myunit\myfolder\mydata\myphotos.gpx

explanation:

• -r recursively search in subfolders
• -p \myunit\myfolder\gpx_wpt_img.fmt use this template file
• \myunit\myfolder\myphotos the folder to be processed
• \myunit\myfolder\mydata\myphotos.gpx the output file

The output gpx is generated in seconds, and then you can load it in QMS as if it was a layer, then, every time you requires the waypoint info you can click on the link to the photo to open it on your pc.

Template

This is the template I have used (can't be attached here):

#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
# File:         gpx_wpt_img.fmt
#
# Description:  Example ExifTool print format file to generate GPX waypoints
#               with pictures
#
# Usage:        exiftool -p gpx_wpt.fmt -ee3 FILE [...] > out.gpx
#
# Requires:     ExifTool version 10.49 or later
#
# Revisions:    2010/03/13 - Peter Grimm created
#               2018/01/04 - PH Added IF to be sure position exists
#               2018/01/06 - PH Use DateFmt function instead of -d option
#               2019/10/24 - PH Preserve sub-seconds in GPSDateTime value
#               2024/04/11 - PH Use %f feature in GPSDateTime formatting
#
#
# Notes:     1) Input file(s) must contain GPSLatitude and GPSLongitude.
#            2) The -ee3 option is to extract the full track from video files.
#            3) The -fileOrder option may be used to control the order of the
#               generated track points when processing multiple files.
#            4) Coordinates are written at full resolution.  To change this,
#               remove the "#" from the GPSLatitude/Longitude tag names below
#               and use the -c option to set the desired precision.
#            5) The link to the image is shown as a miniature of the image
#               itself instead of a text
#------------------------------------------------------------------------------
#[HEAD]<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no" ?>
#[HEAD]<gpx version="1.1"
#[HEAD] creator="ExifTool $ExifToolVersion"
#[HEAD] xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
#[HEAD] xmlns="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1"
#[HEAD] xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1 http://www.topografix.com/GPX/1/1/gpx.xsd">
#[IF]  $gpslatitude $gpslongitude
#[BODY]<wpt lat="$gpslatitude#" lon="$gpslongitude#">
#[BODY]  <ele>$gpsaltitude#</ele>
#[BODY]  <time>${gpsdatetime#;DateFmt("%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%fZ")}</time>
#[BODY]  <name>$filename</name>
#[BODY]  <link href="file://$directory/$filename"><text>&lt;img src="file://$directory/$filename" height="128"></text></link>
#[BODY]  <sym>Scenic Area</sym>
#[BODY]</wpt>
#[TAIL]</gpx>

It is based on the one provided in the exiftool repo on github, I have made a small modification so that the link to the photo is shown as a thumbnail of the image itself instead of a text. This way you have a small preview when you click on the waypoint info, so you can decide to open it following ther link, or not.

I suggest you to try it in command line to see if the result is what you want. It has worked perfect for me when I have needed it.

Remarks:

• In order to use links to local files from QMS, Absolute paths to local files must be used. This sounds like a disadvantage for the future if you move something, but in fact it does not have any negative impact since you can generate a new updated gpx in seconds. (To get absolute paths in the gpx: Exiftool will generate links with the absolute path if in the command line we also use absolute paths.)

• I have noticed that links to local files does not work in the floating menu that appears on the map when you click on a waypoint, but this can be easily corrected (see Waypoint on-screen dialog: Links to local files are not working #794 ).

• I have use this template on linux, may be on win or mac some tunning could be necessary (regarding the paths)

About the enhancement

• For now it is easy to do this task outside of QMS from a terminal or a script.

• In case someone wants to take care of this enhancement, the same process described here could be launched from a wizard in QMS (could be located in the tools menu). This would require:

  • create a wizard (which basically would ask for the folders to process and the location of the resulting gpx and and then launch the process)
  • add to the repo the template that generates the gpx, and a ‘Photo’ icon (this is the easy part). I am not absolutely sure if the same template will work for differents OS.
  • Take into account that there will be new dependencies (exiftool and the ones it brings).

Additional

Exiftool can also add GPS tags to images based on data from a GPS track log file.
This is useful when you have photos without gps data in the exif, and you want to geotag them. More info here