Hi there; I use a mac and I use applescript for that. The Google Earth applescript dictionary is not very extensive, but you can get latitude and longitude just fine. The script reads the coordinates and writes them to a temporary text file, which I later read in the lua script. To execute the applescript from the lua script I use something like this:

exitOption = LrTasks.execute(“osascript ” .. _PLUGIN.path .. “/GoogleEarthKit.scpt ” .. _PLUGIN.path .. “/coords.tmp”)

The applescript itself:

 on run argv
	
	set coordinates to {lat:0, lon:0, alt:0, dis:0}
	--		set theLatitude to ""
	--		set theLongitude to ""
	--		set theDistance to ""
	
	tell window 1 of application "Google Earth"
		set theViewInfo to GetViewInfo
		set lat of coordinates to latitude of theViewInfo
		set lon of coordinates to longitude of theViewInfo
		set dis of coordinates to distance of theViewInfo
	end tell
	
	set coordsSerialized to lat of coordinates & " " & lon of coordinates as text
	
	set filePath to item 1 of argv as POSIX file
	
	set tempFile to filePath as file specification
	try
		open for access tempFile with write permission
		set eof of tempFile to 0
		write coordsSerialized to tempFile
		set eof of tempFile to length of coordsSerialized
		close access tempFile
	on error
		return "error"
	end try
	
end run

I’m not sure how the code will show up in the comment; should you need it as a file just let me know!

Greetings from Spain!

Thanks for the head start! I ended up using GetPointOnTerrain {0, 0} instead of GetViewInfo because I want to know what the user is looking at, not where they’re looking from, but this solves my needs on OSX(!). Thanks! —Jeffrey

I do not know if what you describe is possible and I also I do not know how you intend to use it in connection with yout Lightroom plugin so I can only offer this suggestion.

In Google Earth the user selects
‘View’ -> ‘Make this my start location’ and then
‘File’ -> ‘Save’ -> ‘Save My Places’

so that the

\Application Data\Google\GoogleEarth\myplaces.kml

is updated (unfortunately the .kml file is not updated instantly)

and within your plugin (perhaps in a separate task) chcek the .kml file for any change of
and within .

Hello,

I don’t know much about programming, but if you just want to copy the lat/lng of the current viewpoint, I think you can try Autohotkey.
With autohotkey
– find the windows of GoogleEarch
– send the shortcut for “New Placemark”: Ctr+Shift+P, it should open a dialog
– send 2 times the Tab key
– send Ctr+C
– send Tab key
– send Home key
– send Ctr+V
– send Ctr+A
– send Ctr+C

and you have the lat/lng in clipboard

I hadn’t notice the GetPointOnTerrain function, I guess they extended the dictionary in the last version. I’ll be able to include the altitude now, so thanks to you as well!

Depending on how the application works: Adding a network-link that refreshes every second will send the current coordinates (and the ll and tr-corner) to a webserver. That could well be localhost. You can send back a list of the images in the viewport, so the geo-tagged images also show up in earth.

Chris

That would be wonderful, but Lightroom doesn’t allow any network access other than “open this url”, “send this HTTP POST”, etc, so I can’t do anything as direct as talk to Earth directly. I do have plans for greater integration, but it’ll require some magic under the hood. (There’s already some amazing magic under the hood for many features of these plugins, but users generally don’t care about the mountains you had to move… either it works for them or it doesn’t (and they normally complain in either case 🙂 ) —Jeffrey