As stated in my previous post, there’s the run-down on the Jobo PhotoGPS (available at Fototrade, Luxembourg for 155€).
Derrick Story has been testing the device with his Mac and concludes that it is not bad. Your work flow gets a bit more complicated, but until the cameras will have GPS built-in, this is one of the better solutions. Derrick did however only shoot JPG’s and not in RAW.
The Jobo software is very simple and easy to use and does a decent job of helping you sort out the geotagging of your photos. As stated in the manual for the Jobo software, the geotagging information is written directly to JPG photos and to a XMP sidecar file when it comes to RAW files.
This is all good if you are shooting in JPG format, as the file can be imported into any of the major software programmes (Aperture, Adobe Lightroom, iPhoto).
Shooting in RAW is more complicated. If you have a setup with Adobe Lightroom, you are fine. The XMP format was invented by Adobe, so the format is of course supported. When it comes to Aperture of iPhoto, you are (currently) out of luck, as these two programmes don’t support the XMP sidecar files. I haven’t been able to find any third party solution to the problem either.
So, if you are shooting RAW and is using either Aperture or iPhoto for your photos, don’t buy the Jobo PhotoGPS as you won’t be able to import the information into these programmes.
I have submitted a ticket at Apple regarding this, and I suggest you do the same 
Maybe Jobo could come up with a solution, but I suppose they are more concerned with the Windows market…
UPDATE: as suggested by Derrick Story, you could go with a work flow that involves shooting RAW+jpg and then stack the versions together in Aperture… I personally find that a bit too heavy a lifting…
My I suggest my own – made in Luxembourg – HoudahGeo geocoding software.
Hello Pierre,
Good to hear that some Mac development is taking place in Luxembourg
I see that HoudahGeo will work wonders with a number of GPS tracking devices including the iPhone with the paid app Trails GPS tracker for the iPhone, Garmin, Wintec, etc.
I have tried your app now, and it does not offer a solution for me. As I work in RAW and the XMP format is not supported by Aperture, I need the geodata as IPTC tags in order for me to store the information with my photos. It has been suggested to me that I shoot both RAW and jpg, tag the jpg and stack them together in Aperture. Not a viable solution in my opinion.
Jobo photoGPS software produces a copy of the image files along with a XMP sidecar file with the same name. If only your app could merge RAW files with their accompanying XMP sidecar files… Maybe if you supported the Jobo GPS device as well?
Okay, so I record the geotag info and marry that up after the shoot and the resulting .xmp sidecar gets imported into Photoshop along with the RAW file. I then make a TIFF so I suppose the geotag info gets into the EXIF and this persists with every file version including JPEG. My question is when I make a JPEG from the TIFF and upload this to Flickr does the image automatically get placed on Flickr’s map? If I still have to drag and drop the image myself (to kinda the right spot) I surely don’t need the Jobo!
If the image contains the information, the answer is yes. I imagine that this is highly likely to be the case. It depends on whether Photoshop integrates the XMP information into the Exif data of the jpg. If you shoot in jpg, the Jobo software puts the information directly into the Exif data.