Purpose:
The ArcPhoto Tools are a set of geoprocessing tools and ArcMap user interface enhancements to enable the quick import of digital photography into the ArcGIS framework. The tools work directly off the EXIF (Exchangeable image file format) header information that is encoded into digital imagery. This information usually includes information about the type of camera used, focal length, aperture, type of flash, etc. For professional grade cameras or images taken with ArcPad 7/8, the imagery can potentially hold GPS location information about where the photo was taken as well. At 9.2 the ArcGIS framework can directly read this type of metadata and with the help of the location information the ArcPhoto tools allow for a quick and streamlined integration of rich visual information.
Special functionality for ArcMap includes the display of thumbnail images as “map tips” and the ability to create ArcPhoto Elements – think of thumbnail images as annotation for point features. Finally within the 3D environment the images are applied to create billboards and they are displayed using the captured orientation of the digital photography.
Requirements:
- ArcGIS 9.2 or higher
- .NET framework 2.0
- ArcGIS .NET support
Update:
(build 1.3.2 - 02/04/2009)
- introduction of user defined settings for size of map tips, image size in container, definition of zoom behavior, and number of photos per container page
- allow encoding of time as third dimension during the import of GPX tracks
(build 1.4.0 - 07/27/2009)
- added functionality to read the IPTC header information
- new installer routine for localized deployment packages
- lots of bug fixes
Since the tools have now the potential to be localized I would like to make the tools available in as many languages as possible. Currently the tools do have support for English, German, and Japanese. If you would like to contribute to the tools and you are willing to do some translations, please send me an email - I am looking for volunteers.
Please leave feedback, share comments, or request enhancements on http://friendfeed.com/arcphoto or search for the hashtag ArcPhoto on twitter.
Please take a look at the documentation before you install the tools. If you are contacting me about a bug please provide as much information as possible about your Operating System, ArcGIS install, ArcGIS version, and please include the steps to reproduce the error.
Thanks,
Thomas |
