Match every camera to one GPS trail.

Why use the plug-in?

Lightroom Classic’s built-in Map workflow can load a GPX tracklog, but it does not automatically read the UTC offset embedded in each selected photo. Instead, you adjust photo time with a single manual offset before applying the track locations.

That extra step is easy to get wrong, and one offset may not work for photos captured before and after an international time-zone change. The result can be a location matched to the wrong point in the journey.

The plug-in places each photo’s capture time on the same timeline as the GPX trail. A camera can remain on its previous local time after you travel, as long as its clock stays accurate for that previous location. No camera time-zone change is required. Review the proposed matches before updating the catalog.

Before installing

• Use Adobe Lightroom Classic with Lightroom SDK 6.0 support or newer.
• Use GPX tracks whose timestamps include Z or an explicit numeric UTC offset.

Install the plug-in

1. Download the macOS ZIP or Windows ZIP, then extract it.
2. Move the complete shuttertrail-lightroom-gpx-sync.lrplugin folder to a permanent location. Keep all of its files together.
3. On macOS, install ExifTool by opening Terminal and running brew install exiftool. The Windows download already includes ExifTool.
4. In Lightroom Classic, choose File → Plug-In Manager.
5. Select Add, choose the shuttertrail-lightroom-gpx-sync.lrplugin folder, and confirm the plug-in is enabled.

Geotag selected photos

1. In Lightroom Classic’s Library module, select the photos to geotag. Video files are ignored.
2. Choose Library → Plug-in Extras → Sync selected photos with GPX….
3. Select one or more .gpx files, then choose Use GPX Files.
4. Review the matching summary. Existing GPS data is preserved by default; enable replacement only when you intend to overwrite it.
5. Confirm to write the matched latitude, longitude, and available altitude to the Lightroom catalog.

The closest GPX point must be within one hour of the photo’s timestamp. The plug-in does not interpolate between track points, and it rejects GPX timestamps that have no time-zone information.