Geolocating a photograph without embedded GPS data is a recurring challenge in open source investigation, field verification, and conflict documentation. When metadata is absent or stripped, analysts must work from visible landmarks, architectural features, and terrain to determine where an image was taken.
One geometrically rigorous approach is ray intersection: bearing lines, each anchored to two identifiable landmarks on a map, converge at the camera position. The technique is well established in surveying and land navigation, but its application to open source image analysis has until now relied on manual, split-screen workflows and informal geometry.
TracePoint, developed by EAGLE alumnus Pawel Kluter (github.com/kluter), formalises this workflow as an open-source, browser-based tool. The inital development started during his EAGLE studies but he continued to develop him after he graduated. The tools works in a way, that an analyst places geo-referenced bearing lines on a satellite or street-level map, anchored to landmarks visible in the source image, and reads off the camera position at their intersection. Adding further lines generates a confidence ellipse around the result, visualising the spread of ray crossings and the reliability of the estimate.
The tool requires no installation and no image upload. An integrated EXIF viewer reads camera metadata and, where present, GPS coordinates and camera direction, placing a reference marker on the map alongside the geometric result. Multiple images can be worked within a single session, with bearing lines from different photographs placed simultaneously on one map.
TracePoint has been accepted into jivoi/awesome-osint (github.com/jivoi/awesome-osint), one of the most widely referenced open source intelligence resource collections on GitHub with over 25,000 stars, and into The-Osint-Toolbox/Geolocation-OSINT (github.com/The-Osint-Toolbox/Geolocation-OSINT), a dedicated geolocation resource list.
check it out:
Tool: kluter.github.io/TracePoint | Source: github.com/kluter/TracePoint
