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Author: houdah

Fill Geotagging Gaps Left by Slow-to-Start GPS Camera

In order to save battery, many GPS-enabled cameras power their GPS receiver only once you turn on the camera. It then takes anyhwere from a couple of seconds to several minutes for the GPS to know where you currently are.

If you take a photo during this power-up phase, the camera is left with the option to use a previously recorded GPS location or forgo geotagging the photos.

At the end of the day, you will have a set of photos where some images lack geotags. This can easily be fixed with HoudahGeo.Geocoding gap left by GPS camera

Continue reading Fill Geotagging Gaps Left by Slow-to-Start GPS Camera

Incremental Photo Geocoding Using Maps

Manually geocoding a long list of photos can be daunting. With HoudahGeo it’s a snap. Follow the workflow outlined below and you’ll be done in no time.

The workflow takes advantage of the fact that the distance travelled between two photos is often rather short and easy to retrace. Once you have determined the location of the first photo, you just need to make incremental adjustments to geocode subsequent photos. It takes but a nudge to the map and a click for each photo.

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Find Files from a List of Names

Sometimes, you get a list of file names and need to find the actual files. You may be a photographer who sent out a contact sheet for photo proofing and got back an email listing the images to be printed. Or you may have sent friends messages with tiny photos and got a reply asking for larger copies of images 7359, 7365 and 7366.

HoudahSpot can help you work through such notes and collect the requested files. Continue reading Find Files from a List of Names

Save Queries for Recurring Searches

HoudahSpot allows you to customize many aspects of a file search:  query, criteria, locations, columns, sort order, etc.

You will want to save such customized searches for later reuse. HoudahSpot gives you different ways to do so.

Continue reading Save Queries for Recurring Searches

Find and refile misplaced files

Let’s say you have set out to store all your MP3 and AAC songs in the Music folder. Yet, over time, some of those files have been saved to other locations. You can use HoudahSpot to find the misplaced files and move these where they belong. Continue reading Find and refile misplaced files

Find Images With No GPS Coordinates

In a previous post,  we searched for files with no Spotlight comment or tags. Today,  we are looking for photos with no GPS latitude or longitude information.

The technique we used last time works for any metadata attribute containing text. For example: subject, author, album, etc. It does not work for number or date values. HoudahSpot won’t let us use the “*” wildcard character in the criteria editor. It expects us to enter a number or a date.

Since latitude and longitude are both numbers, we need to use a slightly different technique. We will make us of some of the more advanced features of the HoudahSpot search field. This is located in the toolbar of the search window.

Continue reading Find Images With No GPS Coordinates

Create Lists of Files. Export Metadata to CSV

Use HoudahSpot to create lists of files. For example, you could create a list of …

  • Photos shot this year. List file name, resolution & path
  • Video files larger than 100 MB. List duration, codec & file size
  • Audio files located outside your iTunes media folder
  • Old files. List date created and date last modified
  • …

HoudahSpot can save search results to CSV files. These files can, for example, be imported in Apple Numbers, Microsoft Excel spreadsheets etc. Note that HoudahSpot uses the tab character as separtor beween columns.

Continue reading Create Lists of Files. Export Metadata to CSV

See the Total Size of a Folder

The HoudahSpot File Info window shows information about the currently selected search result. For folders, this includes the total size of all items contained within.

It is quite easy to use HoudahSpot to inspect other files or folders. Simply drag a file or a folder from Finder, from HoudahSpot, or any other application onto the File Info window.

You can use this technique to see the total size of a parent folder of a file you have found using HoudahSpot. Continue reading See the Total Size of a Folder