Microsoft Pro Photo Tools
- by Jeff Greene
Microsoft has released the first version of Microsoft Pro Photo Tools with geotagging today. Microsoft Pro Photo Tools provides a set of tools for photographers to perform various tasks with their images—including RAW captures. Download the current version to quickly geotag your photos, view and edit numerous metadata fields and much more, leveraging the power of Windows, Microsoft Live Local and Microsoft Virtual Earth.
Features include:
- address to latitude/longitude conversion
- latitude/longitude to address conversion
- loading track routes stored by GPS devices
- placing images on track routes based on time stamps, with a visual adjustment tool
- integration with Virtual Earth for
-- text based location searches
-- interactive placement of photographs
-- visualization of track routes
-- 2D and 3D map browsing
Download Microsoft Pro Photo Tools here...
Comments
Anonymous
May 01, 2008
Microsoft Pro Photo Tools Version 1.0 ReleasedAnonymous
May 02, 2008
32bit only? Really? When is the photog running 64 bit going to get any love from anyone!?Anonymous
May 02, 2008
I love how Microsoft made a more professional photo tool, but I wonder what this means for Live Photo Gallery or Vista Photo Gallery. Wouldn't it be better if Microsoft just made a "real" professional photo editing software, that had all the great perks? Instead of releasing lots of bits of photo software dispersed out this way? I would love to see a more perfected professional all-in-one solution coming from Microsoft. I don't think it would ever top the quality of Photoshop, but I wouldn't mind trying out what Microsoft had to offer, as long as it functioned a lot more then many different tools that MS offers.Anonymous
May 02, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
May 02, 2008
I have tried this yet, but I am very excited. I have been carrying a GPS with me when taking photographs for years and using the http://wwmx.org tools for a long time. I really hope that this doesn't suffer the same problems at the old wwmx tools that would erase some Exif data when saving.Anonymous
May 03, 2008
I'm a bit disappointed with this tool. The lack of 64-bit support is obvious, but I have another problem. I have a set of images that came from my Nikon D300 and had GPS information inserted into them by Breeze Systems Downloader Pro. Picasa sees the GPS info, as does PhotoMe. Pro Photo Tools does NOT see the GPS information, and sees the photos as untagged. I had hoped to used PPT to convert the GPS info into a textual location, but that won't work. Is there anyone to whom I can send an image that demonstrates this problem to determine why PPT 1.0 doesn't see the GPS info that the other apps do?Anonymous
May 03, 2008
Very convenient tool, except that even with the most recent Canon RAW codecs it won't save geotag information to the image. At least if it does, Adobe Lightroom can't recognize it. Lightroom does recognize the geotag information in a .JPG file, but not in a .CR2 file.Anonymous
May 04, 2008
It cannot read multipple gpx-files and missing this feature make it pretty useless. If you have a lot of pictures and several log-files it isn't easy to know which single gpx-file to load. And it don't understand gpx-files from my wintec gps. If someone at Microsoft need more gpx-files for testing and debugging, I am happy to provide one. Contact me at prophototoolsblog.dr.sv@heime.orgAnonymous
May 05, 2008
Love the functionality. However performance is lacking severely when saving the geotag info to a substantial number of RAW photo's. It took almost an hour on a pretty beefy machine to save info to 700 Canon RAW CR2 images which makes the tool pretty much useless for day to day usage.Anonymous
May 05, 2008
It seems to be a nice Tool, but if I try to "Load from File" gpx/KML/NMEA-Trackfiles from my Wintec-GPS-Receiver I get the Error: "Did not find any gps data in ..." :-(Anonymous
May 05, 2008
Microsoft Pro Photo Community Blog : Microsoft Pro Photo ToolsAnonymous
May 05, 2008
Microsoft Pro Photo Tools for geotaggingAnonymous
May 06, 2008
Maybe a nice tool, but... no x64 support!!??Anonymous
May 07, 2008
Layered .psd templates and digital backgrounds Templates include: Graduation Invitations, Senior Portraits, Wedding Collages and Wedding Invitations, Birth Announcements and more.....Anonymous
May 09, 2008
I have the same problem as Marcel: "No GPS data found..." when trying to load a track - I tried to convert into different GPS formats, but nothing is accepted (the input is from a Garmin device, so this really shouldn't be the problem)Anonymous
May 11, 2008
Will not save CR2 or DNG files in 32-bit Vista w/ Service Pack 1.Anonymous
May 12, 2008
I had to change the system settings, to get it work for kml-file. parsing of the kml-file should not depend on the language settings of the computer. UliAnonymous
May 12, 2008
I am not able to write the data to Canon CR2 files using the Canon Codec. I have tried Robogeo, and it writes the geotag info to CR2 files which Pro Photo can read. No problems with tiff and jgp. Its a nice tool if it would only work with CR2 files.Anonymous
May 12, 2008
Pro Photo Tools makes changes to JPG without problem. But after adding geotags or changing create date in an image, Photoshop Bridge no longer displays the correct original image create date. Instead it displays the date Pro Photo changed the image. I think this is happening because on RAW files, it ignores the XMP file and changes the image file itself. Why Bridge goes after that date field is something I don't understand. When I look at the EXIF data, after the change is made, it still contains the correct Image create date, not the modified date. When I talk to Adobe, they blame the OS. When I try to get to Microsoft Support and search for Pro Photo Tools, or try online chat they have never heard of their own product.Anonymous
May 13, 2008
The new Adobe DNG codec doesn't work either. Adobe just released their WIC Codec for DNG and the Pro Photo Tools can't modify the metadata in those files, either. It appears to modify the CR2 files, but when I import them in to Lightroom (post geotagging), none of the modified metadata gets imported. I would like to have this step be my new first step in my workflow, prior to importing into Lightroom.Anonymous
May 13, 2008
Uli got it! As soon as you switch the regional settings to US (with 24h time, according to your camera's setting), the tool happily reads my GPS data files and works as expected...Anonymous
May 19, 2008
The comment has been removedAnonymous
May 25, 2008
I got the same problem as Marcel: "It seems to be a nice Tool, but if I try to "Load from File" gpx/KML/NMEA-Trackfiles from my Wintec-GPS-Receiver I get the Error: "Did not find any gps data in ..." :-(" Where are the answers to all the reported questions?Anonymous
May 26, 2008
I've precisely the same trouble as Marcel and Axel ... I'm using a Garmin etrex, and I'm loading the data onto my laptop using EasyGPS (which can only write to .gpx files ... I looked at the file in Emacs, and it's just an XML recording samples of the position v. time function) ... Does anyone know what we can do to fix this? E.g., I'd be happy to write a small utility to parse the XML and write it back in whatever format Pro Photo is expecting.Anonymous
May 30, 2008
Hi Marcel, Axel, and K.D.P. Ross: Did you guys see this posting a few before yours? "Uli got it! As soon as you switch the regional settings to US (with 24h time, according to your camera's setting), the tool happily reads my GPS data files and works as expected... " (from 'noluck'). What do you have for Regional Settings? It should be able to parse NMEA, GPX and KMLs. There is an alias you can email your questions or problems to: prophoto@microsoft.com. I would encourage you to do so to help them make a better product. Thanks, CarlosAnonymous
June 03, 2008
picasa compatibility issue? I try to add text locations to pictures with long/lat data added by google picasa. All works fine up until I try to save the changed jpg files. I get an error message "the following files couild not be saved:" and then the filenames. The files are not read only or encrypted. The same procedure worked fine with pictures that had never been in picasa, that's why I suspect picasa. Any ideas? /tommyAnonymous
June 04, 2008
Same problem as others: it's not possible to save metadata for canon raw files.... is there any solution for this problem? thanks rolfAnonymous
June 04, 2008
I'd like to say that I like using the tool to geotag my photos. I agree with one comment made earlier that saving back to RAW format photos is not particularly quick. On my wish list for a new version I'd like to be able to set my name and address and other information in a profile and then be able to apply a profile of my choice to a set ofg pictures. It becomes quite tiring to input that information every time. FrançoisAnonymous
June 07, 2008
- by Jeff Greene Microsoft has released the first version of Microsoft Pro Photo Tools with geotagging today. Microsoft Pro Photo Tools provides a set of tools for photographers to perform various tasks with their images—including RAW captures. Downloa
Anonymous
July 06, 2008
Use at your own risk. I found out the hardway, that this tool destroys most of your exif information.Anonymous
July 08, 2008
seem as marcel It seems to be a nice Tool, but if I try to "Load from File" gpx/KML/NMEA-Trackfiles from my Wintec-GPS-Receiver I get the Error: "Did not find any gps data in ..." :-(Anonymous
August 21, 2008
In response to Carlos: I tried that out today, and success! ProPhotoTools is really nice -- the time-adjustment slider is really well-designed, and I've just very quickly geotagged over a dozen set of images.Anonymous
September 15, 2008
Microsoft Pro Photo Tools Version 1.0 ReleasedAnonymous
January 22, 2009
A suggestion - how about adding a "Favorites" folder to store GPS locations? I regularly take pictures in 10-12 different locations. Clicking on a link to go right to that particular spot on the map rather than entering info in the search field would save tons of time while manually geotagging images.Anonymous
February 16, 2009
For those who encountered effect of not showing or corrupting EXIF metadata in PPT: It is very likely that some of such cases are because of incorrect EXIF in your pictures. I have revealed that when tried to fix this problem with some of my pictures. After some sort of software (like Exifer) metadata gets somehow broken and cannot be recognized by PPT or iTag (however it is still visible in viewers). To fix that I edited my metadata in ExifTool GUI that seems to be correct with it and after that PPT shows it correctly.Anonymous
February 26, 2009
The majority of my photos dating back to 2005 are unrecognisable by this tool since it doesn't recognise the .MRW (Konica Minolta) extension. Granted, the company ain't around anymore, but Picasa's able to display my RAW files as is of course Photoshop and Bridge. I thought the tool overall was OK.Anonymous
May 08, 2009
The date picker is an absolute deal breaker for me. I'm cataloging slides scanned that were taken in the 50's and I'd like to set the date to the date on the slide. Seriously, you expect me to scroll back 40 years month by month to set the date? You couldn't give us the option to just TYPE the date in?Anonymous
May 02, 2010
Yes, this tool also destroyed my EXIF data, and now I have to waste hours trying to find out how to correct it. Adobe software won't parse the exif output of this tool and it likes to write it's own name all over the exif data. I'm sorry I ever used this tool. I strongly recommend not using it.Anonymous
June 17, 2010
ProPhoto Tools did NOT work as advertised - I could not edit and save Metadata. AND the support page EMail address doesn't work either. Usual trash from MS - sound & fury signifying nothing. cvtAnonymous
July 28, 2011
prophoto@microsoft.com from their help menu doesn't work!!! emails are returned immediately...so much for support and help. i too simply wanted to open an .kml file i created using google maps...