Photo Processing Toy

These days when we travel, we get photos from phone,  camera,  friend's phone, and friend's camera. Each device has its own naming system, so it is hard to sort them according to the names from all devices. Luckily the picture files have metadata that captures the time when the picture is taken. I hacked down to the metadata and extracted both the time and the place the picture is taken. By setting date and place information into the pictures' file names, they can not only be easily sorted but also the places I have traveled are clearly shown up. While organizing my pictures, surprisingly, one camping place I thought in Santa Cruz Capitola, it is in Aptos in fact. So if you would like to know the exact place the picture is taken, it is really helpful.

While I was searching a good app to mark pictures on the map, Intagram claimed it has the functionality. However when I tried it, it is such a lame product. Intagram doesn't use the pictures location information at all, instead it uses the location when the user is sharing the pictures. If one takes a bunch of pictures on the trip and later share those pictures when one gets home, the home location is used to mark the pictures on the map :(

In this toy too, I also mark the places extracted from the picture in the map by scanning the pictures' GPS information. At the end, a nice trip journal map is generated. By clicking on the marker point, the picture taken there will pop up.

To use the software, first install python and PIL library.
Run the program with the absolute path of the album.
The program will rename all pictures in the album with date and place information if those information is available in the metadata.
At the end, a tripmap.html file is generated that can be viewed in a browser. All the places where pictures are taken will be marked on the map and by clicking the icon, the picture taken at the specific place will pop up.
Example:
/* B:\test is the absolute path for the directory of pictures */
/* -rTrue means all the files will be renamed, if -rFalse, the files will not be renamed but a map of the trip with pictures markers will still be generated */
python photo.py -iB:\test -rTrue

The code locates at:
https://github.com/xiaoqin2012/release_photo

This is one output example from trip in Europe:

This is for the sailing trip from Victoria to Desolation Sound in Canada: