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PBase Maps Beta

ckirby
PBase Admin
PBase Admin
 
Posts: 85

PBase Maps Beta

Post Mon Mar 10, 2008 6:40 pm


Hello all, PBase Maps is finally here! However, it is still in the beta stage because there are still some features we want to add before we link to it all over the place. This is where you guys come in! Test it out, let us know what you dislike, what you would like added, and most importantly any bugs or weird behaviour. If you do have a bug, post your operating system, internet connection speed, and browser you were using.

Here's the link: http://maps.pbase.com
Some other links to test out:
maps.pbase.com/user_name
maps.pbase.com/user_name/gallery_name
maps.pbase.com/image/image_id
maps.pbase.com/edit/image/image_id

Here are some features we plan on adding:
- mouse over clusters to see how many images are there
- large size of image displayed when you click the photo (rather than taking you to the image page, the link below the image would still do that)
- gallery tour option, this would be very similar to the gallery slideshow except it would use the map to show the route the photographer took when he/she shot the gallery
- when showing images from a gallery have an option for showing images from subgalleries as well
- gallery navigation for someone's gallery besides your own
- a "link this page" link that provides you with a url of the map you are looking at (interacting with PBase Maps doesn't cause page reloads so the address bar doesn't necessarily represent the map at which you are looking)
- support for maps.pbase.com/edit/ (would be the same as going to maps.pbase.com while logged in and clicking the 'Geotag your photos' link)
- support for maps.pbase.com/edit/owner/gallery_name (like above only then clicking on a gallery afterward)
- automatically take gps data from exif to geotag your images when you upload them

If you guys can give me some good feed back I will try to maintain this list by adding and marking off features.

slug
Site Admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 598


Post Mon Mar 10, 2008 6:58 pm


Here's a link to my map page so you can see it with some locations already set.

http://maps.pbase.com/slug

I hope you have as much fun setting locations on your photos as I did.
Some of them were taken years ago and it was fun trying to remember exactly where I was.

-slug

syrcam
 
Posts: 9

Just one question?

Post Mon Mar 10, 2008 7:57 pm


How do we get our images to show up on the map?
What information needs to go where to get them to show up on the map?
Do I need to enter coordinates and in what format if so?

It looks great so far!

Thanks in advance!

--Shawn

ckirby
PBase Admin
PBase Admin
 
Posts: 85


Post Mon Mar 10, 2008 8:29 pm


Just click the 'Geotag your photos' button at the top left (if you have a lot of galleries it will take a few seconds for your gallery list to load), click the gallery that has the photos you want to tag and click one of the images to start tagging that image. A balloon should pop up on the map over a marker that you can drag to the right location. Once you have the marker in the spot you want, hit the 'save' link and you will notice the question mark turn into a globe next to that image on the left. This means that image is tagged and when you click the 'View your photos on map' it will show up with all the other photos you have tagged so far.

ernst
 
Posts: 537
Location: Maastricht, Netherlands

Thank you!

Post Mon Mar 10, 2008 10:08 pm


Great stuff!!!! :D 8)
I just had a quick look and will try it more the coming days.

At first sight it looks great, but I had a little trouble navigating back to the photos I came from. Is it possible to open the map in a new tab or window?

careysb
 
Posts: 169

Looking for tutorials on GeoTagging with a GPS

Post Mon Mar 10, 2008 11:02 pm


I'm shooting with a Canon 5D, which of course does not have built in GPS support. I saw two GPS devices that were aimed at photographers:
http://www.gisteq.com/PhotoTrackrLite.php
http://www.dpreview.com/news/0608/06080202sonygpscs1.asp

But I'm a little unclear as to how my images get updated using these devices. There is mention of some software that coordinates the time on the camera with the time on the GPS and then updates the JPG files. Does anyone know if these devices and software can also update RAW sidecar files? Does anyone have other devices or software to recommend or comments on either of these two devices?

I'm also assuming that once the software updates the geo information in the JPG's metadata that PBase's map will be able to use the data automatically. Is this true?

Thanks in advance. Looking forward to GeoTagging.
Carey

careysb
 
Posts: 169

Map mode vs satellite

Post Tue Mar 11, 2008 2:10 am


Why do my maps default to 'satellite' view? (Vista, Firefox, DSL)

(I might give you more feedback on this thread but I've already used up two out of three possible posts. Post limit is not always a good thing.)

careysb
 
Posts: 169

Photos at exact same location

Post Tue Mar 11, 2008 3:45 am


I clicked on one of my tags that said '2+', then I expanded the cluster and saw thumbnails for the two pics, I selected one of them, then I clicked on the image title which displayed the full size image, then I clicked on 'view map' and it brought me back to the map but instead of seeing '2+' there was only a single tag and I couldn't get to the other image. To get past this I had to zoom out and back in and then the '2+' reappeared. (Vista, Firefox, DSL)

Ahh, beta software. I'm still excited about this feature so keep plugging away at it guys. Thanks.

Carey

larena
 
Posts: 199


Post Tue Mar 11, 2008 3:48 am


Is it possible to tag multiple photos at once, rather than updating them individually? Most of my photos were taken at the same place, so it would be handy to select all photos in a gallery (maybe using the 'Batch Update Selected Images in this Gallery' feature) to give them the same coordinates.
Larena

srijith
Moderator
 
Posts: 2321
Location: Amsterdam


Post Tue Mar 11, 2008 8:38 am


First of all - Great work and thanks! Something new to play with :P

Echoing Larena's comment, can we geotag multiple photos at the same time? It is kind of a slow and boring process to tag them individually when all of them are from the same place!

Also, since PBase already has the "Country" and "Location" field for galleries and images, could that we used to set the 'default' location for the untagged images so that we can start off with some work already done?

rhodanig
 
Posts: 1

Re: PBase Maps Beta

Post Tue Mar 11, 2008 2:41 pm


ckirby wrote:If you guys can give me some good feed back I will try to maintain this list by adding and marking off features.


Works great! Much better than Google's own version. I had no problems at all setting up a map link to the following image:

http://www.pbase.com/image/92948767

Check it out. The locator should fall exactly on top of the mosque in the Google satellite map.

ckirby
PBase Admin
PBase Admin
 
Posts: 85


Post Tue Mar 11, 2008 3:17 pm


careysb: What you are describing is actually the way we intended the site to work. When you clicked the image title you were actually sent away from pbase maps back to regular pbase looking at the image page for that image. Slug just recently added the 'view map' link on the image pages and that link is intended to take you to pbase maps with the map centered on that image, at the zoom level it was saved at, and with the map type it was saved with. You also could have received the same result if you had clicked on the box with 4 arrows in it (preferred zoom) instead of clicking the image title.

srijith: I like this default location idea, I will be working on it.

nolock
 
Posts: 70

Re: PBase Maps Beta

Post Tue Mar 11, 2008 3:21 pm


ckirby wrote:- automatically take gps data from exif to geotag your images when you upload them



This one feature alone would be awesome! But make sure please to maintain the option of 'satellite' view; photographs from remote or wilderness locations will otherwise appear in a big blank screen on Google Maps.

Right now, I'm having some trouble manually inputing the lat/long, because that feature seems to only accept decimal-format lat/long.

nolock
 
Posts: 70

Re: PBase Maps Beta

Post Tue Mar 11, 2008 3:22 pm


...and by the way, THANK YOU!! for all the hard work to bring this wonderful feature to Pbase.

slug
Site Admin
Site Admin
 
Posts: 598


Post Tue Mar 11, 2008 3:45 pm


careysb: We'll be definitely adding the auto-extraction of gps data from uploads soon. Thanks for the GPS links. Hopefully we can all learn from each other for now about the best way to synch cameras with GPS receivers.
I expect in a couple of years though, GPS data will be pretty standard in digital photos.

On mass updating of locations.
We'll end up with a way of making a guess based on an image's location string, but let me tell you why I'm not in love with the idea.
I'm a fan of precision. With my photos, I've tried to move the marker to the exact spot on the world within the tolerances of the map data.

If for example you accept the initial coordinates given for the string "Arizona", it'll give you a point in the middle of the desert.
So now when I look at this photo, I'm unsure if you were really right there on that spot, or if it means somewhere in the entire state.
Accepting the center coordinates for a large geographical area like a country or state really adds no more information that the name of the country itself.

I'll be encouraging everyone to take the time to place the marker as close as possible. I believe that 20 well placed markers are far more valuable than 1000 roughly placed markers. This will become even more true as we move to viewing photos from all users in an area.

But I realize that some people just don't care about low-level accuracy and will be satisfied that the marker indicates they visited some region.
But when it comes time to search for photos in an area, we'll try to distinguish between carefully placed and crudely placed photos.

On the advanced tab of the location edit window, there's a field called precision. This is a way for you to indicate how well placed your photo is.
For example, if you know the photo is somewhere in a building, maybe you set precision to 20meters. If it's somewhere in a city, maybe 30,000 meters.


While we'd love to have more location data, and parsing your image location strings is a good way to get lots of data. I'm still not sure if this would be Good data which is why it's not done already.
We'll find a way to to automatically determine a precision level for future search purposes, and then we can go ahead and do some mass location addition.

But again, I encourage you to try to set fewer more precise locations than many. Quality > Quantity.

-slug

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