For many, it is important to keep track of where their images are taken. Darktable makes this easy for everyone, regardless of whether a given camera has built in GPS or not. The easiest is of course to have a camera with GPS, but unless you take your pictures with your phone, this is not guaranteed. Most of us do have a mobile phone with GPS, though, and this can be a valuable tool, although I suspect it is widely ignored. I myself didn’t actually think seriously about this until I started researching this video, but from now on I will use it on every trip.

Darktable’s map view gives a very good overview of where your photos are taken, and after using the Find Location module to find the area, there are three different ways to place them on the map. The simplest way is if your camera has GPS built in. Then the images will have the position in their EXIF data and Darktable will read this on import and place the images automatically.

The next method is to use a dedicated GPS device or an app on your phone to record a GPS track. This can be imported into Darktable and attached to all relevant images at once.

Finally, if you don’t have access to any of these methods, you can always drag images from the film strip onto the map manually.

Here are some GPS tracking apps for Android and iOS. Sorry I couldn’t find a way to link directly to a search in App Store.

And when your curiosity gets the better of you and you want to learn how to use the map view, look no further than to the video below: