GPS coordinates aren't currently extracted, but I can see how that would be cool. If you (or someone else) could send me one of these photos with embedded GPS, I can use that as starting point for getting it working. Send it to roger*at*techinfosystems*dot*com.

Yep, I received it - thanks. I added it to the official feature request log, but it will unlikely be included in a release this year. However, if someone volunteers to add the feature to the source code, I will try to get it in the next release.

OK, I glanced at the source and did a quick test with your image file. I think it won't be too hard. Here's what you need to know:

The metadata extraction is done in the file/class MediaObjectMetaDataExtractor.cs in the project TIS.GSP.Business. Metadata are extracted when an object is first added to the gallery and when a synchronization is performed when the "Re-import metadata" option is selected. Metadata are extracted in two basic steps:

1. Raw metadata are extracted from the image and stored in an internal dictionary named _rawMetadata.

2. A small subset of the raw metadata is extracted and formatted into user-friendly phrases, such as "3008 px" for width. This subset is returned by the GetGalleryObjectMetadataItemCollection method and assigned to a property on the Image class, where it is ultimately stored in the gs_MediaObjectMetadata table in the database.

I confirmed that GPS data is being extracted in the first step, so all you have to do is format the raw data into a user-friendly format. The dictionary where the raw data is stored (_rawMetadata) is keyed by the enum RawMetadataItemName. Notice this enum has over a dozen items beginning with 'GPS', with probably the most important being GpsLatitude and GpsLongitude.

What you need to do is add code to the function AddExifMetadata to pull out the raw GPS data from _rawMetadata, format it, and add it to IGalleryObjectMetadataItemCollection parameter passed into the function. This will involve adding at least one item to an enumeration named FormattedMetadataItemName - I suggest GpsLatitude and GpsLongitude but if you think something else is more appropriate go for it.

Once you add the formatted value to the collection, you are done. It should automatically be persisted to the database and displayed in the metadata window. In fact, it probably took me as long to write this as it would have to have actually done it, but this post can serve as general instructions for anyone wishing to modify the metadata extraction.

Note: In addition to pulling data directly from the Exif data using the .NET 2.0 technique, if .NET 3.0 or 3.5 is installed, the MediaObjectMetaDataExtractor class gives priority to any metadata discovered via the new WPF classes. This happens in the function AddWpfBitmapMetadata. However, for GPS purposes you can ignore this as the new WPF classes don't extract GPS data anyway.

Hope this helps,

Thanks for your work. I will take a look at this and possibly incorporate it into the 2.1 release next month.