Geotag Photos from a GPX Track Log in ExifToolGui
A GPS track log records where a logger or phone was, second by second. If your camera was with that logger, each photo’s capture time points at one spot on the track, and the position can be copied into the photo as GPS metadata. ExifToolGui V6.3.12, Frank Bijnen’s fork of Bogdan Hrastnik’s GUI for Phil Harvey’s ExifTool, supports geotagging files in batch from a log file, and ExifTool itself documents geotagging from track logs with time drift correction.
Success depends almost entirely on time. The photo timestamps must be accurate before you start, so fix a wrong camera clock first with shifting EXIF time by an offset. This guide then covers choosing the reference time, running the batch, and checking results on the map. It sits in the Tutorials hub; the program is on the download page.
Prepare: Accurate Times and a Matching Log
Gather the photos and the track log that covers the same outing. The log must contain the time window in which the photos were taken; a photo outside the logged window has no position to match and will be left without coordinates. Check a photo taken at a recognisable place, such as the start of a walk, and confirm its DateTimeOriginal is right to within a minute or so.
The V6 documentation flags a PC timezone note for this workflow, and it deserves attention: matching is done by comparing timestamps, so the timezone basis of the camera times and the log times must be understood before you run the batch. If the camera recorded local time and the log is in UTC, apply the offset to the photos first, otherwise every photo will be matched hours away from where it belongs.
- Photos and log cover the same time window.
- Camera clock verified against a known moment.
- Timezone basis of photos and log reconciled.
Run the Batch Geotag From the Log File
Select the files to geotag in the file list, then use the GUI’s geotagging function with your log file. The documented flow is: select the files, choose the log, and choose the Reference DateTime value the matching should use. The GUI, through ExifTool, then looks up each file’s capture time in the track and writes the corresponding latitude and longitude into the file’s GPS tags.
Work on copies for the first run, as with every batch write in this program. Geotagging adds tags rather than changing existing descriptive metadata, but a wrong timezone assumption writes confidently wrong positions into hundreds of files at once, and removing a bad batch is slower than testing a small one. Ten photos are enough to prove the setup before you select the whole folder.
Check Positions on the Map Pane
After the batch, open the map view and step through several photos, including the recognisable one from your preparation. Their markers should fall on or near the route in the log, at the places you remember. The V6 GUI shows an OpenStreetMap-based map (MapTiler layers, updated in V6.3.12, need the optional WebView2 components) and the original GUI tradition also allows manual placement: select files and write the map position into them, which is the right fix for a photo whose time was too far off to match.
Scattered markers far from the route almost always mean a time problem, not a log problem: return to the offset guide, correct the times, delete the wrong coordinates using the removal steps in removing GPS and location data, and geotag again from clean copies.
Decide What to Do With the Coordinates Afterwards
Geotagged originals are valuable in your own library: mapping software, timelines and place searches all use the GPS tags. The same tags deserve a decision before anything is published, because a precise coordinate reveals where a photo was taken. Many photographers keep geotagged masters at home and strip location only from copies they share.
That sharing-side workflow is covered in strip metadata before sharing or selling photos, and the removal mechanics are in remove GPS and location data from photos. Geotag first, archive the geotagged masters, and clean only the copies that leave your machine.
Keep the Log With the Photos
Archive the track log file alongside the geotagged folder. Months later, the log is the evidence for why a photo carries its coordinates, and it is the raw material you need if you ever re-geotag the set with corrected times. A log stored in a downloads folder that gets cleaned monthly will not survive to serve either purpose, while a copy in the shoot folder costs a few kilobytes.
Also record, in the folder or your archive notes, which reference time basis the matching used and any offset you applied to the photos first. Geotagging results are only reproducible when those two facts survive. A future re-run, on a new computer with a fresh ExifToolGui V6.3.12 setup, should be able to reproduce your positions exactly from the log, the photos and that note.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did some photos get no coordinates?
Their capture times fell outside the track log’s window, or their timestamps were too inaccurate to match. Confirm the log covers the full outing and the camera clock was correct.
Does the camera need built-in GPS for this to work?
No. That is the point of the workflow: positions come from a separate logger or phone track, matched to the photos purely by capture time.
Can I geotag one photo manually instead?
Yes. The GUI’s map workflow lets you place selected files at the map position and write that position to them, which suits single photos or fixing individual mismatches.
With positions verified on the map, your library gains a place dimension it did not have. The Tutorials hub covers the neighbouring skills: accurate dates, batch descriptive edits, and renaming, which together turn a folder of files into an organised archive.