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KARIN TUXEN-BETTMAN: Hello.
And welcome to another Google Earth Outreach on Air training.
My name is Karin.
And I'm a program manager on the Google Earth Outreach team.
Today we're going to be talking about how
to create a map of photos with Google My Maps.
A lot of nonprofits, and scientists,
and other organizations that do work in the field,
they go out into the real world to measure aspects
of the environment, or maybe to conduct population surveys,
or to take other field observations for their work.
As part of this work, you might find yourself capturing
photographs in the field to document
what's there and maybe what's changing over time.
So in this session today, we're going
to show you how to take geotagged photos using
your smartphone, which you probably have in your pocket
right now, and then import those photos onto a map using
Google My Maps.
So let's quickly go over the agenda for our training.
First, I'm going to give you a quick introduction
to Google My Maps.
Then I'll talk about how to take geotagged photos.
I already have some geotagged photos myself
so I'll show you how to import them into Google Photos
and build a Google Photos album with them, which will then
import into My Maps.
Finally, we'll cover some advanced topics that are really
helpful to know once you've mastered the art of creating
a map of photos.
But before we get started today, I
wanted to share with you what our final map will look like.
By the time we're done, we'll have a map
just like is on the screen here of photos from my visit
to Permanente Creek, which is a little creek near the Google
Campus in Mountain View, California.
You'll notice also my GPS track which I've added.
I'll also cover that during the advanced topics today.
So with that, let's get started.
Google My Maps is a super easy tool
to use for creating simple maps.
You can add points, and lines, and shapes in Google My Maps.
You can import spreadsheets and map data.
You can style and visualize with all that data.
You can annotate or add information with text,
including hyperlinks, images, and videos.
You can import photos by adding them as photo albums, which
we'll do today.
You can also collaborate with other people on Google My Maps.
So you both can be adding data to the maps at the same time.
And finally, you can share online
or you can even embed on your website or blog.
So next, let's get started on how to take geotagged photos.
The best app for capturing geotagged photos
is to use the native camera app that's already
on your smartphone today.
Whether you have an Android or iOS phone or tablet,
using the native camera app works great.
There are a lot of other apps out there in the different app
stores that you can download and install.
And it'll give you additional options like filters and things
like that.
But the native apps work just fine for field photos
and for creating a photo map.
Both of these, both Android and iOS,
allow for upload of your photos to the Google Photos app,
which I think is a great app for backing up, and storing,
and organizing your photos.
But no matter what camera app you choose,
you'll need to remember to do one important thing
before going out into the field.
Every camera app allows you to set whether or not
the geotagged location is stored along with the photo.
It is really important to allow the location
to be recorded as part of the photo to save you the work
and the time it takes of geolocating them manually
yourself after you've taken them.
For Android phones, you can set this in your camera settings.
First, get to the settings by clicking on the little Settings
gear.
Then make sure that Save Location is enabled
or it's highlighted in blue.
The little checkmark is blue.
For iOS phones, you can set this in your Settings menu
by going to Privacy.
Then go to Location Services.
Then find Camera in that list and choose While Using The App.
That way while you're using the app and taking photos,
the geotag location is stored along with it.
And then go outside.
Make sure your camera--
make sure your phone is charged for your field day.
Once you're outside, you can just
capture photos as you would on any outing in your life.
And the location is just saved along
with every photo in the background.
Each photo that you take with your smartphone
or any digital camera records details with it.
This is called EXIF data, E-X-I-F.
EXIF stands for exchangeable image file format.
And it's basically information about the images,
like what kind of camera was used to take it,
the date, the time it was taken, the photo resolution.
Where you took that photo is the geotag location that's
stored along with it if you have that saved location
enabled as we have here.
Back at your home or in your workplace,
then you'll need to get the photos
you took onto Google Photos.
You can either set--
inside Google Photos, you can set
Google Photos to automatically back up your photos.
That's what I have on my phone.
So I don't even have to think about it.
Any photo I take shows up on Google Photos on my account
or you can manually do it.
So we're going to show you briefly
how to manually upload them.
Then while that's going on, we can then--
I'll show you how to build a photo album.
So before we move on to Google My Maps,
I'm first going to demonstrate how to do this manually
so that if you have photos, you can upload them
to Google Photos.
So the first thing you would do is in Google Photos,
this is my work Google Photos account.
I have pictures from previous workshops in here.
And if I click Upload, I can click Computer.
And I can choose to go to my folder here.
And I can choose to start selecting all the photos I want
to upload and then click Open.
Since I've already done that, I'm going to cancel.
And I'm going to find my photos.
It just so happens that my photos I took for this exercise
and for my creek restoration project
map I took on September 26, 2017.
So I'm going to be searching for that date.
And here we go.
All of my photos I took from my field
are stored in Google Photos.
And so the first thing I'm going to do
is I want to start selecting photos
to put into an album, which I'm then
going to import into my maps.
So first, let's choose the photos I want to import.
I like this photo a lot.
This is another perspective of that main sign
so I'll add that as well.
Signs and information postings are really important for my map
so I'm going to click that.
Any kind of stream health or riparian vegetation
is really interesting so I'm going to click that.
These photos were taken after an invasive species removal
project So.
I'm going to make sure all of my photos
include pictures about that.
If I hold down the Shift button, I can also select multiple.
You'll notice here that some of the photos I took
are not very good, like this one of this egret
didn't come out very well.
So I'm going to skip over that one.
And I'm going to go ahead and choose a couple more photos,
skipping over ones I don't need, to get a good selection
of the photos that I want.
Make sure I capture all the pictures that I
want to upload in my album.
I'll add that one too.
Then the next step is click up here, this big plus sign.
This is to add to or to create a new album.
Now if I went out to the field with my colleagues,
with my teammates, I might choose
to create a shared album.
Then multiple people can upload to this album.
But for now, it's just me so I'm going to click Album.
And I'm going to click New Album.
And I'm going to name it Creek Restoration Photos.
I'm going to click the check box.
And there we have it.
I have an album.
So the next step I'm going to do is
I'm going to go over to Google My Maps.
OK.
Great.
So now we've created a Google Photos album.
And next we're going to now import the Google Photos album
Creek Restoration Photos into a Google My Map.
The best way to find Google Maps is
to go to mymaps.google.com or to Google, Google My Maps.
You'll land on a page where all of your maps
are stored that you either own or are shared with you.
The first step is to click on Create New Map.
This will create a brand new map.
And I'm going to change the name from untitled map
to Permanente Creek Restoration Map.
I can use the toolbar up here to draw points, to draw lines,
to draw shapes or whatnot.
But the first thing I'm going to do is I'm going to import data.
If I click here on this import, you
can see that I can choose to upload a CSV, or an Excel
spreadsheet, or a Google Earth KML file, or a GPS exchange
or GPX file.
We'll come back to that in a minute.
But you'll notice up here that I can
choose to upload it for my computer
or upload it from Google Drive, or I
can choose to import a Google Photos album.
So I click that and I click photo album.
And I see all of my albums that are part of my account.
And if I scroll down, you'll see-- look at that--
Creek restoration photos, which has all of my photos
that I just added to my album.
What's nice about this is this gives me a second chance
to pick and choose which photos I want.
But since I already know that I want all of these photos,
I can scroll down to the bottom and I can just
select them all by drawing a box around all of my photos.
Then I click Select and Google My Maps copies
the photo into my map.
And just like that, using the geotagged information that's
stored along with the photo, Google My Maps
geolocates the photo on the map.
And it offers a little icon of the actual photo
so it gives a really nice preview of what
I'll see if I click on it.
The first thing I'm going to do is
I'm going to change the title of this layer
from imported photos to Creek Restoration Photos,
or whatever you want to name it.
And then I can do a couple of things with this.
First, I can click on one of these.
Let me zoom in here and look at some of these.
OK.
Here this is a bridge on the Google campus
that joins the west campus to the east campus.
I've walked across this many times.
And I've looked out over the river.
And what's interesting about this
is that it's a little play on words.
This is called the Google Gate Bridge.
Somebody named it that in Google Maps.
And so you'll see that I can actually change and edit
this name.
If I wanted to show this, I could
say shoreline or the riverbank vegetation and click Save.
Then as you can see, over here my table of contents,
the title has changed and my little pop-up balloon the title
has changed.
If I look at other things like this sign,
I can change that as well.
You'll also notice that Google My
Maps attempts to add some helpful information to some
of these.
If I click, I can see that there is
some information that is added with some of these balloons.
For example, it automatically adds the address
here on the bottom of the balloon.
If I don't like that, I can always
click Remove, and then click Edit
and add my own information to the balloon myself.
So as you can see, you can add titles.
You can add descriptions.
You can remove the location that it offers.
And so just like that, I've created a photo map.
It's that easy.
No extra work.
No extra manual work on my part.
Now as a sneak preview for the advanced topics
later, I wanted to show you how to import a GPX file.
Let's say you have a GPS unit or a GPS tracker
app on your smartphone and you've tracked yourself
on your hike or on your expedition.
You can click Add Layer.
And you can import a GPX file.
This is, again, a GPS exchange file
that most GPS units export.
We're going to select File from my device.
Go to my Creek Restoration Folder
and choose creekfieldday.gpx.
It uploads and automatically adds my track to the map.
I can scroll down.
And I can change the title to be GPS track.
Finally, you'll notice on the very bottom of my layer list
here is the word base map.
I can click this little box right next to the word base
map.
And I can choose different options
for my underlying base map.
I can choose terrain if I like the way that looks.
I can change it to satellite image.
I can change it to more of a muted color scheme
so that the data much more richly pops out.
So I'll leave this one as light political, which
is basically the Google Maps base
map but with lighter colors.
And with that, I'm done with my map.
The next step would be to share.
So if I click on the Share button here,
I can choose to enable link sharing, which would then
make this link viewable by other people on the internet.
So I could either email or tweet this if I wanted to.
But if you want everyone to be able to find it
on Google Search engines or any other search engine,
then you'll want to make this completely public
so that everyone on the internet can find and access.
And so with that, I'll click Close
and go back to the slides.
All right.
Let's cover a couple of the advanced topics
before we finish.
The first one is let's say you forget to save location along
with your photos.
Don't stress.
You can always do this manually.
It will take you a little bit of time.
But there are some helpful tools that will get you started.
This picture on the right here shows Geoimager or IMGR.
This is a tool that lets you add geotag location
to many photos at once.
Another topic is GPS.
GPS testing.
In some environments, such as heavy tree cover,
or in a canyon like an urban canyon or a very
hilly environment, you may have trouble getting a GPS signal.
I like to use an app to give me an idea of how many satellites
my phone has seen.
So you can see here a couple of good example of apps
for both Android and iOS.
With these apps, you can see the placement
of satellites across the sky and how strong each of the signals
is.
A good rule of thumb is the stronger
the signal and the more distributed
they are across the sky above you increases the accuracy.
Some GPS apps even give you an accuracy of your position,
like 10 meters or one meter, et cetera.
And finally, if you want to add a GPS tracker to your map
but it's not in that GPX file format
that we talked about, that you can convert it
from another file format like KML or shapefile.
You can convert it to GPX using some of these helpful tools
here, specifically GPSBabel or GPS Visualizer.
And with that, we're all done.
And my finished map is beautiful and ready to share with others.
Thank you so much for joining me today
on making a beautiful and easy GPS photo map.
Thanks for joining me.
And happy field work.
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