Left with some images at your gallery from the fieldwork which are not in your tracking application? Use this tool to land those images in the specific location – compare with the tagged points & tadaah! Complete your fieldwork with ease.

• Converts a folder of photos (JPEG / PNG / HEIC) that contain GPS EXIF into a single KMZ file with one placemark per photo.
• Also copies files into useful folders and writes a CSV report for QA.

• Scans an input directory (recursively) for image files.
• Accepts: .jpg, .jpeg, .png, .heic (case-insensitive).
• Converts HEIC → JPEG using macOS sips, then copies EXIF metadata back to the JPEG using exiftool. Originals are not modified.
• Extracts GPS EXIF (GPSLatitude, GPSLongitude, optionally GPSAltitude) and DateTimeOriginal using exiftool.
• Creates a KMZ containing doc.kml and an internal files/ folder with the images used.
• Copies:
  • images that have GPS into files_geo/ (next to the output KMZ),
  • images that do not have GPS into files_nongeo/,
  • any non-image or unsupported files into files_nonimg/.
• Writes a CSV report: <output_basename>_report.csv with columns:
  • slno — sequence number (starts at 1; geotagged images first in chronological order),
  • filename — basename of the source file (HEICs are converted to JPEG first; CSV shows the converted filename),
  • datetime — DateTimeOriginal (ISO string when available; otherwise empty),
  • lat — latitude (decimal) or empty,
  • long — longitude (decimal) or empty,
  • status — OK / NO_GPS / NON_IMAGE.

• macOS (the script uses sips to convert HEIC → JPEG). On other platforms you can modify the conversion step (e.g., use magick / ffmpeg).
• exiftool must be installed and on PATH. Install with Homebrew:

  brew install exiftool

• Windows / Linux — the Windows script variant uses magick (ImageMagick) or ffmpeg for HEIC conversion. If you use the macOS script on Windows, replace the conversion step or use the provided Windows variant.
• Python 3.8+ (uses standard library only).

# Basic
python3 create.py /path/to/photos/ kmz/photo-marks.kmz

# If output path omitted, creates `images.kmz` in current directory:
python3 create.py /path/to/photos/

# Example
python3 create.py ~/Pictures/my_batch/ kmz/photo-marks.kmz

After running you'll see:

• kmz/photo-marks.kmz
• kmz/photo-marks_report.csv
• files_geo/ (copied geotagged images)
• files_nongeo/ (copied non-geotagged images)
• files_nonimg/ (copied non-image / unsupported files)

Open the resulting .kmz in Google Earth or Google Earth Pro.

• HEIC conversion: The script converts .heic files to JPEG into a temporary heicfix_ directory, copying the original EXIF tags to the converted file using exiftool -tagsFromFile. The converted JPEGs are the ones embedded in the KMZ and copied into the files_geo/ or files_nongeo/ folders.
• Original files: Originals are not modified.
• Supported files only: The script explicitly ignores files that do not have the allowed extensions and copies them to files_nonimg/.
• Ordering & naming:
  • Photos are sorted oldest → newest based on DateTimeOriginal (falls back to file modification time).
  • Each used photo is named p1, p2, ... in the KML. The KML placemarks are written reversed so newer placemarks appear above older ones in the Google Earth layer list
• Icon: Uses the donut icon http://maps.google.com/mapfiles/kml/shapes/donut.png for placemarks. If you prefer embedding the icon into the KMZ, edit the script to copy the icon into the KMZ and reference it as files/icon.png.

• If exiftool is not found: install via Homebrew and ensure brew's bin is in your PATH.
• If HEIC conversion fails: confirm sips works on your mac (sips -s format jpeg file.heic --out out.jpg) and that the HEIC file is not corrupted.
• If many images are missing GPS: check a sample image with:

  exiftool -gps* -DateTimeOriginal -G1 -s sample.jpg
  

• Very large KMZ: embedding many full-resolution images will produce a big KMZ. Consider generating thumbnails (script can be modified to create thumbnails instead of embedding originals).

Use this script freely. Attribution appreciated but not required.

• Install exiftool: brew install exiftool
• Put all images in /path/to/photos/
• Run: python3 create.py /path/to/photos/ kmz/photo-marks.kmz
• Open kmz/photo-marks.kmz in Google Earth and inspect kmz/photo-marks_report.csv for QA.