Yes, and in addition we have completely updated the plug-in architecture to a universal 32/64-bit binary which solved many compatibility issues that arose throughout updates of Snow Leopard and Aperture 3.

Please keep in mind that to be able to run the plug-in in 64-bit mode, your system must also be 64-bit capable. Meaning that you must have a 64-bit processor and operating system installed. Identifying the operating system is the easy part, Mac OS 10.6 is the only 64-bit OS released thus far. Please refer to this Apple support document to find out if you have a 32-bit or 64-bit Intel-based Mac.

As of Aperture 3.0.2 on both 10.6.3 and 10.5.8 operating systems, re-opening already tagged images in the same Aperture session may display the longitude as reversed on the map even though the embedded GPS metadata is correct when viewed from the metadata browser. If this behavior is experienced, to workaround it you must quit and restart Aperture which will reset the positions on the map to their correct locations. Aperture 2 is not affected by this behavior.

We have a general FAQ section with a licensing page outlining the answers to most common questions here. If you find you still need assistance, please email support here.

This is a known bug. We’re sorry about the inconvenience. Restart Aperture and Maperture’s preferences window should function normally. We're currently exploring solutions to the problem.

With the recent changes in the way Google handles this data, it has become more difficult to automatically assign altitudes to images. We are working on a solution.

In general terms, geotagging is the process of adding location-specific data (GPS) to any type of media. Maperture Pro adds a specific set of geographic information to a digital image's metadata (latitude/longitude/altitude).

The Global Positioning System (GPS) is a Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) developed by the United States Department of Defense. It is the only fully functional GNSS in the world. It uses a constellation of between 24 and 32 Medium Earth Orbit satellites that transmit precise microwave signals, which enable GPS receivers to determine their current location, the time, and their velocity. More information can be found here.

To geotag an image with Maperture Pro, highlight an image in Aperture and either launch the plug-in by navigating to the Images menu and choosing “Edit With > Maperture Pro” or right-click on the image itself and choose “Edit With > Maperture Pro”. Once the plug-in launches and becomes available, simply click on the map to drop a pin which sets that location. Click Save and your image has been geotagged with GPS metadata.

Whenever you geotag an image in Maperture Pro, a pin is added to map for the image's location. If the pin or image is selected, the pin is highlighted blue. If the pin or image is not selected, the pin is highlighted red on the map.

Definitely, you can geotag all the opened images or a custom selection simultaneously within the plug-in. Once you have your selection of images in Aperture, either launch the plug-in by navigating to the Images menu and choosing “Edit With > Maperture Pro” or right-click on the selection itself and choose “Edit With > Maperture Pro”. Once the plug-in launches and the image browser becomes available, now select the images you would like geotagged with the same location. Then click on the map to drop a pin which sets all of the selected images locations and click Save. Basically the action to geotag a single image and multiple is identical, the only difference is what is selected in Maperture Pro's image browser.

To quickly check if multiple images have already been geotagged, simply select the photos you'd like to check and launch Maperture Pro. Any image that contains a geotag will be displayed with a globe icon badge in the image viewer and a pin on the map.

Alternately, in Aperture 2 you can check an individual image's metadata by selecting the Metadata tab in the Projects Inspector and choosing “List - Expanded” from the topmost drop-down. If the GPS fields are not visible on your desired view, choose the “EXIF” or "IPTC" tabs (located at the bottom of the Project Inspector) and select the appropriate checkboxes to add them to your current view.

In Aperture 3, navigate to the Metadata tab and click the upper-most dropdown to select your view format. By default, the "General" metadata view does not show GPS information, which can be misleading. In the metadata dropdown there are presets included for viewing specific sets of data. "GPS" will show you the core EXIF values for latitude, longitude and altitude. "IPTC Core" will expand any reverse geocoded information embedded in your images along with some other fields. And to customize your own list of values, choose "Edit" at the bottom of the dropdown and check the desired fields.

Maperture supports the following file formats:
ARW / CR2 / CS1 / DNG / HDP / JPX / JPEG / JPG / MEF / MIE / MOS / MRW
NEF / NRW / ORF / PEF / PSD / RAF / RAW / RW2 / RWL / SR2 / TIF / TIFF / WDP

Unfortunately the CRW and other specific file formats do not support storing geographic information, such as latitude and longitude, in their EXIF fields. Currently unsupported image types are displayed with a yellow exclamation mark on the image thumbnail in the image browser when loaded. When these formats support writing of GPS metadata via EXIFtool, Maperture will also support them.

Maperture modifies the following EXIF fields:
GPSLatitude
GPSLatitudeRef
GPSLongitude
GPSLongitudeRef
GPSAltitude
GPSAltitudeRef
GPSMapDatum
GPSVersion

Reverse Geocoding refers to the process of generating location-specific textual information based on existing GPS metadata. For example, if you drop a pin to geotag an image at The Space Needle, the plug-in would populate certain IPTC fields with information such as: Seattle, WA, United States (if the automatic feature is enabled). To enable automatic reverse geocoding when geotagging, open the Preferences and navigate to Geocoding. Click the checkbox and choose which IPTC metadata fields to populate (Country, State/Province, City, Address). Alternately, if you launch the plug-in with images that contain embedded GPS metadata already, you can manually reverse geocode these images by right-clicking the image and selecting "Reverse Geocode" from the dropdown menu.

To quickly check if an individual image has been reverse geocoded, select the Metadata tab in the Projects Inspector and choose “All IPTC” from the topmost drop-down. If the City, State/Province, Country and Address (Content Location Name) fields are not visible on your desired view, choose the “IPTC” tab (located at the bottom of the Project Inspector) and select the appropriate checkboxes to add them to your current view.

Maperture modifies the following IPTC fields:
Keywords
ContentLocationName (Address)
City
Province-State
Country-PrimaryLocationCode
Country-PrimaryLocationName

By default, Maperture Pro does not assign a keyword to images processed with the plug-in. To add one or more keywords to geotagged images, open Preferences and navigate to the Keywords panel. Click the checkbox and define your keyword(s), separate multiple keywords with a comma.

Yes, Maperture Pro supports GPX, KML, LOG, NMEA & TCX tracklog file formats. Once you have successfully extracted the tracklog data file from your GPS device and, if needed, converted it into one of the above supported formats. Click on the action “Gear” drop-down menu in the upper right corner and then “Import Tracklog”. Alternately, you can drag and drop your tracklog GPS file onto the Maperture Pro image browser to import the file (look for the green "plus" icon). Once you have selected and imported your tracklog file, Maperture Pro will display a summary of information collected from the tracks found versus the timestamp information of the images open in the plug-in. This summary screen will also allow you to modify the “Matching Style” and “Time Offset” to account for incorrectly set GPS devices and/or cameras. After you have made the necessary adjustments, click the “Match Images” button to see the updated number of images that will be geotagged from the tracklog file. When you are satisfied with the results, click “Set Locations from Tracklog” and the plug-in will begin to process your images.

By definition, a tracklog is an ordered sequence of GPS coordinate measurements stored by a satellite navigation system. Most GPS devices are capable of recording tracklogs for use by Maperture Pro.

Unfortunately Maperture Pro will not interface with your GPS device at this time. But there is a variety of free software that is available for the Mac that can perform this task. LoadMyTracks and GPSBabel are some of the best free utilities to extract and convert tracklogs from GPS devices.

This setting allows you to correct inconsistencies due to improper calibration of the camera time or date to that of your GPS device's time and date, which can cause inaccurate automatic geotagging from the tracklog data file. To best calculate this value, either take a picture of your GPS device displaying standard time and date at the beginning of your photography session, or make a note of both your GPS device and camera's time/date. This will allow you to easily calculate the difference between the two device's time and date stamps when you import the tracklog file. By using this setting, you are adjusting the time used to match your images to that of your GPS device's recorded information if they should differ. Note that the time of the actual image is not modified in the EXIF metadata, this setting is only used to match the images to the tracklog within the plug-in.

This method of matching takes the time stamp information of the image and finds the two tracklog points that it falls between and chooses the closer of the two points to tag the image. This method may not be as accurate as “Averaged Point” depending on your GPS device, but will adhere to the points in the tracklog data file. The "Within" slider underneath allows you to set the range of time between the two closest tracklog points that will be used to match your images. This is usually set to 5 minutes, but may need to be adjusted depending on your scenario.

This method takes the time stamp information of the image and finds the two tracklog points it falls between, then averages the point to tag the closest actual location where the image was taken. Theoretically this method would be more accurate than “Closest Point”, though there are many different formats of tracklogs and may interpret this data incorrectly. The "Within" slider underneath allows you to set the range of time between the two closest tracklog points that will be used to match your images. This is usually set to 5 minutes, but may need to be adjusted depending on your scenario.

By default, Maperture Pro will use any previously embedded GPS coordinates in the selected images to start your session. However if all the images selected do not have GPS information, your “Home” address from Address Book on your personal card (the one with a dark silhouette icon) will be used to center the map on this location. The “Default Map Location” behavior can be changed in the Preferences of the plug-in under General to either “Work” (from Address Book) or “Other Location”, which is a custom location that can be an address, location name (i.e. The Space Needle) or latitude/longitude coordinates. If you launch the plug-in with no information in your Address Book under “Home” or “Work” and none of the launched images have been previously geotagged, Fremont/Seattle will be your starting location of your session because it is the center of the universe...

The hand icon will either take you back to your default map location (see above) when the plug-in initially launched, or to your last searched location. This behavior is also the same when the custom controls are disabled and as close to Google Maps as possible.

Maperture Pro can lookup addresses, location names (i.e. The Space Needle) and latitude/longitude coordinates from the search field and will take you there on the map. You will still have to click on the map for a specified location, or use the "Drop Pin at Current Location" option from the gear menu to geotag your image(s). The magnifying glass icon also stores your searches for later use.

Maperture Pro can focus the map on a geotagged image by either double-clicking on the image thumbnail in the browser or right-clicking the thumbnail and choosing “Show Location Info” from the contextual menu. Both of these options will center the map on the selected image, but “Show Location Info” will also show the information bubble popup that includes when available: File Name, Image Date, Latitude, Longitude, Altitude, Address, City, State/Province and Country.

Yes. When you save, Maperture Pro modifies the master file. However, as a precaution, Maperture Pro's default behavior is to generate a backup of the master file prior to making any changes to your files. You can disable the master backup option in Maperture Pro's preferences.

As of Aperture 3, both on 10.6 and 10.5 operating systems, this issue is now resolved and all embedded GPS metadata from Maperture Pro is now exported correctly in either master or versioned images. Keep reading below for information on the workaround for Aperture 2 systems...

When embedding GPS metadata (EXIF) via Maperture Pro, the metadata is saved directly to the image file and displays in the metadata browser. When exporting master images, this newly embedded EXIF information is also exported intact since it has already been tagged directly. However when exporting versions of any geotagged image, Aperture does not export the new GPS tags. And to further complicate the matter, optional reverse geocoded information (IPTC) is stored separately resulting in mis-matched metadata depending on the type of image being exported.

We are speculating that since Maperture Pro edits the image after capture, it is out of sync with Aperture's metadata library. Which is why we call the “Update Master from EXIF” command to restore sync between metadata, but it is still not picking up the GPS added by the plug-in. It seems the issue actually stems from the fact Aperture does not support editing of GPS EXIF metadata via the UI, but Maperture Pro must edit this information in the background via EXIFtool for geotagging to be saved. Just like camera attachments that automatically geotag images must write to the actual file, so must our plug-in—in a more manual fashion.

There is now a workaround to this issue in Aperture so that all geotagged information from Maperture Pro will be exported with your images. It seems though you must be running the most up to date version of Aperture for this to work properly, currently 2.1.4. After geotagging via Maperture Pro, quit Aperture and force a rebuild of the library by holding Command + Option when re-launching. Aperture then seems to sync all the newly added GPS information to its master metadata library, solving the problem. You can now edit your images and export with all the EXIF & IPTC metadata intact. You would need to repeat this step after adding new geotags which you would like to export.

There is no change to the actual pixel information of the image(s) processed by the plug-in. Maperture Pro writes EXIF and IPTC tags invisibly with no loss of quality.

Yes, referenced images are able to be geotagged & reverse geocoded just the same as images that are stored within an Aperture managed library with no loss of information.

We have done everything possible to ensure Maperture Pro only impacts your image's GPS metadata fields (see above for a complete list). However, as there are a large and ever increasing number of file formats available to digital photographers, the possibility exists that we have not tested how Maperture Pro handles editing some of the file types out there. As such, we strongly encourage you to do a before and after comparison of a sampling of your geotagged images prior to disabling the master backup option.

Aperture has a built-in feature in the Metadata drop-down menu called “Show on Map...”, which can also be selected by right-clicking on the image. Choosing this will display any geotagged photo you select in Google Maps via a web browser. Additionally, there are a number of photo sharing web sites that support displaying geotagged images on a map such as Picasa Web Albums and Panoramio. (Übermind's Aperture to Picasa Web Albums plug-in is a quick and easy way to upload your geotagged images to Google's photo sharing service.)

When you click “Show on Map”, it is actually just sending the GPS coordinates to Google Maps online. Which then shows you that location on the map, plus any images that may match its latitude and longitude from online services such as Panaramio.

Since we use a web service to display the interface via Google Maps, an internet connection is required and the plug-in must send/receive data from the server. Internet speeds & service usage also have a factor in this loading process.

Unfortunately at this time the plug-in requires an internet connection to initialize the plug-in and services. In a future release, we could include an offline / tracklog only mode for such usage in the field if no internet connection is present.

This was originally caused by a conflict with the Safari 4 Beta or not having a version of Safari installed. We have since resolved that issue with the Safari 4 Beta in our current released version. But due to the initial public release of Safari 4, Maperture Pro was temporarily incompatible again as result of this update. Apple since made changes to the Safari code which impacted its functionality. Update version 1.2.3 of the plug-in once again brings back full functionality with the latest updates from Apple installed. However, Maperture Pro will still require a version of Safari to be installed on the machine. Another side effect since the public release of Safari 4 is that Maperture Pro and our standard version of Maperture now can cause a conflict when both are installed where the map does not display after using the alternate plug-in in the same session. This has also been resolved as of the latest version available. If you are still experiencing these symptoms, please update to the latest version of the plug-in via the preferences update section.

Yes it can. However, previous to the release of Safari 4 this was not an issue and both plug-ins were able to be installed and caused no conflicts. But since the public release of Safari 4, having both Maperture Pro and our standard version of Maperture now can cause a conflict when both are installed where the map does not display after using the alternate plug-in in the same session. This has also been resolved as of the latest version available. If you are still experiencing these symptoms, please update to the latest version of the plug-in via the preferences update section.

When diagnosing plug-in errors, there are several system variables to take into consideration first before digging deeper into the code. Repairing your permissions is a good place to start, and also good practice after installing software. To do this, launch Disk Utility from the Applications under Utilities. Then select Repair and press Repair Disk Permissions. This basically cleans up your system files so that they can access each other properly. If that does not resolve the issue, you could simply restart the machine as another basic starting point. Testing in an alternate or new account could also help in determining the root of the issue. For more on what information you should send in when requesting technical support, please read through the general FAQ section or contact us.

Maperture Pro can be removed by deleting the plug-in file located at:
Macintosh HD/Users/YOUR USER NAME/Library/Application Support/Aperture/Plug-Ins/Edit/MaperturePro.ApertureEdit

If you are removing this plug-in because you have experienced problems or it did not meet your expectations, please contact us and let us know why.