Shutter TrailWhat you need
- An iPhone running Shutter Trail during the shoot.
- Photos whose camera clock was reasonably accurate.
- Adobe Lightroom Classic and the free Shutter Trail GPX Sync plug-in.
1. Record your GPS trail
Turn on Record Trail in Shutter Trail before you begin photographing. The app records your iPhone’s GPS locations as you move. Use High Accuracy when you need more consistent background coverage, then turn it off after the shoot to conserve battery.
2. Create and export a trip
Afterward, create a Trip covering the time range of the shoot. Review the trail, then export the Trip as a GPX file and save it somewhere available to your Mac.
3. Select photos in Lightroom Classic
Import the photographs and select the images you want to geotag in the Library module. You can work with a single shoot or photos captured throughout a longer trip.
4. Match the photos to the track
Choose Library → Plug-in Extras → Sync selected photos with GPX…, select the exported GPX file, and review the proposed matches. The plug-in compares each photo’s capture time with timestamped track points.
5. Review before writing locations
Check the summary, especially unmatched photos and matches far from the recorded trail. Existing GPS metadata is preserved unless you deliberately choose to replace it.
Tip: Before a major trip, take one reference photo of an accurate clock. It gives you a simple way to identify and correct a camera clock that was set incorrectly.
Why use the Shutter Trail plug-in?
Lightroom Classic can load a GPX track, but its built-in workflow uses one manually selected time offset. The Shutter Trail plug-in accounts for each photo’s time context, keeping the workflow usable across cameras and time zones—even when a camera remains on its previous local time.