ExifTool Forum

Hi all!

I'm trying to geotag my photos through command line exiftool, and i'm facing an unexpected behaviour.

I have some Lisbon photos without gps coordinates and I wanna set them properly so I'm using:

exiftool.exe -n "-gpslatitude=38.7436882" "-gpslongitude=-9.1952232" "PATH_TO_MY_PHOTO"

It seems everything is OK, because exiftool tell me

Quote1 image file updated

But when I check that the coordinates were setted properly, I find that the negative sign doesn't exist:

exiftool.exe -n -gpslatitude -gpslongitude "PATH_TO_MY_PHOTO"
GPS Latitude : 38.7436882
GPS Longitude : 9.1952232

I've tried to escape the minus sign, and I've tried to set the longitude with:

-gpslongitude-=gpslongitude

Any of them worked fine :'(

I have read the exiftool documentation and also the FAQ section but i couldn't find what i'm doing wrong.

Could anyone help me identifying what is my mistake?

Thank you in advance.

BR,

Rhino.

Hi Rhino,

You need to also write the reference directions for EXIF GPS tags.  See FAQ 14 (https://exiftool.org/faq.html#Q14) for details.

- Phil

Hi Phil!

Thanks a lot. It works fine!

Rhino.

I'm having trouble geotagging photos.  I have already used EXIFtool to set the time of each photo to the GPS time from a csv file.  exiftool -csv+='csvfile.csv' *.tiff

Now I'm trying to geotag each photo with unique location data for a large sea-floor mosaicking project.  I had luck with geotagging one image
exiftool -GPSLongitudeRef=W -GPSLongitude=88.0163671 -GPSLatitudeRef=N -GPSLatitude=29.1710418 sentry.20140429.001623959568.9.acun.tiff

I have tried every iteration of KML, CSV, and GPX file I can produce with no luck.  Here is my latest KML file that I converted online somewhere and then edited to match the desired format. 

<Placemark>
<name>sentry.20140429.001644015121.11.acun.tiff</name>
<TimeStamp><when>2014-04-29T00:16:44.015-4:00</when></TimeStamp>
<Point><coordinates>-88.0163671,29.1710418</coordinates></Point>
</Placemark>


I attempt to geotag the KML file with this command line
exiftool -geotag 231Sentry.kml *tiff
I'm in directory the has all the images and the KML file, and it errors out with Warning: No writable tags set from sentry.20140429.001633998951.10.acun.tiff for each image.

Thank you for your response.

What is the output this command?:

exiftool -geotag 231Sentry.kml -v2 sentry.20140429.001623959568.9.acun.tiff

My guess is that this is troubleshooting problem 2 (https://exiftool.org/geotag.html#Troubleshooting).

- Phil

Argument "-Geotime<DateTimeOriginal" is assumed
Loaded 8395 points from GPS track log file '231Sentry.kml'
  GPS track start: 2014:04:29 04:16:23 UTC
  GPS track end:   2014:04:29 14:59:59 UTC
Writing File:Geotag
======== sentry.20140429.001623959568.9.acun.tiff
Setting new values from sentry.20140429.001623959568.9.acun.tiff
Warning: No writable tags set from sentry.20140429.001623959568.9.acun.tiff
Nothing changed in sentry.20140429.001623959568.9.acun.tiff
    0 image files updated
    1 image files unchanged


This is interesting as it appears that the kml files is read and all points are found, the date and time is being read.  I added the time zone info to match the output of exiftool -s image after changing all dates from the csv.  Would it better to remove the timezone information and have it assume local?

It is troubleshooting problem number 2 as I guessed.  Try following those instructions.

- Phil

Interesting!

Thank you, I had tried that awhile ago, before I had a properly formatted KML.  It appears to be running through the ~8400 images now and re-writing them to the directory.  Is there a way to just append the geotagging?  This is already a working dataset with no need to preserve the originals. 

Now on to the larger task!
Thank you Phil!
Milo

Hi Milo,

Great.

Add the -overwrite_original option if you don't want to preserve the originals.

- Phil