The latest release of RoboGEO – Version 5.0 – supports the ability to directly geotag your photos using Google Earth. The technique is very elegant and is very similar to the geotagging feature in Google’s free Picasa 2.5 photo organizer/enhancement. The screenshot here shows me geotagging some photos from a sailboat I picked up in the Virgin Islands to deliver in the US. Here’s the resulting Google Earth file 
with the photos. This literally took me 2 minutes to create with RoboGEO. RoboGEO gives you some nice options for how to output your data to Google Earth.
RoboGEO isn’t free, but for US$ 34.95 for a personal license it is an excellent value. RoboGEO has the most complete featureset for geotagging photos and outputting the photos to applications like Google Earth and Maps I’ve seen to date. It allows you automatically geotag your photos if you have a GPS with you while you are taking photos. Now it also lets you take photos you’ve already taken and easily place them very accurately with Google Earth. RoboGEO writes the position information in the EXIF data just like Picasa. So, mapping applications can easily know the position of your photos. See an example of how I used an earlier version RoboGEO to document a backpacking trip where RoboGEO took my GPS track and my photos and automatically created a Google Earth file showing the trip.
Related:
- Geotagging your photos for Flickr using Google Earth
- Three Flickr Photo Browsing Tools with Google Earth
- Picasa Web Albums – Geotag with Google Earth
About Frank Taylor
Frank Taylor started the Google Earth Blog in July, 2005 shortly after Google Earth was first released. He has worked with 3D computer graphics and VR for many years and was very impressed with this exciting product. Frank completed a 5.5 year circumnavigation of the earth by sailboat in June 2015 which you can read about at Tahina Expedition, and is a licensed pilot, backpacker, diver, and photographer.
REally like your Blog on GE and I enjoy the articles, but it would be helpful to note if products are PC, Mac or Linux compatible. RoboGEO is a great program but NOT Mac friendly. Do you know of a similar program for the Mac?
Thanks, ERIC
Speaking about “geotagging”: do you know locr?
locr offers the ideal solution and makes geotagging exceptionally easy. locr uses GoogleMaps with detailed maps and high-resolution satellite images. To geotag your photos just enter address, let locr search, fine-tune the marker, accept position, and done! If you don’t know the exact address simply use drag&drop to set the position.
For automatic geotagging you need a datalog GPS receiver in additon to your digital camera. The GPS receiver data and the digital camera data is then automatically linked together by the locr software. All information will be written into the EXIF header.
Use the “Show in Google Earth” button to view your photos in Google Earth.
With locr you can upload photos with GPS information in them without any further settings. In the standard view, locr shows the photo itself, plus the place it was taken. If you want to know more about the place where the photo was taken, just have at look at the Wikipedia articles which are also automatically assigned to the picture.
Have a look at http://www.locr.com.