4.6 Beta2 - GPS Compatibility with Capture NX2 / View NX

[jrubio2]

I'm having an issue with 4.6 Beta and GPS compatibility with Capture NX2 and View NX.

This works fine:
I "Geotag" in ViewNX.  Capture NX2 and Photo Mechanic read the coordinates perfectly.

This does not work:
I "Set GPS Coordinates..." in Photo Mechanic, but ViewNX and Capture NX cannot recognize them.

I would much prefer to use Photo Mechanic to set GPS coordinates b/c this is where I do my tagging, etc and the interface is much more intuitive than ViewNX.

Would it be possible to have the next 4.6 version of Photo Mechanic write the GPS coordinates so they are readable in Capture NX2 and View NX?

Thanks!

[dennis]

You are geotagging NEF files, right?

Photo Mechanic doesn't try to modify the Exif information in a RAW file such as NEF.  So it adds XMP information for the GPS data, and unfortunately Nikon's software doesn't recognize GPS in XMP.  Of course Nikon's software can modify the Exif in a NEF file since they own the format and know all about its internals.  Photo Mechanic looks first for the Exif GPS data, then falls back to XMP on reading.  For writing GPS, only JPEGs currently have the Exif data modified for adding GPS data.

--dennis

[jrubio2]

Thanks Dennis.  Yes, I was referring to NEF files...sorry about not making that clear.  What you're saying does make sense, but when I add GPS info in Photo Mechanic to NEFs no XMP file is generated.  Does PM adds it to the NEF, but not in a way that CNX2 and ViewNX recognize?

Thanks again.

[RonD200]

PM does embedded the GPS information in the XMP in NEFs as Dennis stated, but CaptureNX2 doesn't read it. CaptureNX2 is looking for the GPS information in the EXIF.  I use Robogeo to tag my photos and it writes the GPS into the EXIF.  I was told that PM didn't want to put the info into the EXIF at this time, but I sure wish they would reconsider and make it an option to write the GPS to the EXIF so CaptureNX2 would read it. I would rather use PM to tag my NEFs but right now I'm just using PM to tag my JPG files.  Hopefully a future version of PM will write the GPS to EXIF  or maybe the next version of CaptureNX will read the data from the embedded XMP.

Ron

[jrubio2]

Good explanation Ron.

I also wish GPS were embedded in the EXIF portion of the NEF.  Maybe in the future!

Thanks,
Jose