Location, location, location

[dusty.camera]

Hi All,

I wrote my own code years ago to Geotag and generally organize my photos. I've been using ExifTool to valid everything is working as expected. I was hoping in the last 10 years Location (Shown and Created) would have standardized, but it looks like it hasn't.

If so, where do people generally recommend writing Country\State\City\Address for Shown\Created?

GeoSetter, which uses ExifTool appears to use a combination of the XMP Photoshop and Iptc4xmpCore tags for Location Created:

"City" (LPWSTR) ["http://ns.adobe.com/photoshop/1.0/" (LPWSTR)] == "GS City" (LPWSTR)
"Country" (LPWSTR) ["http://ns.adobe.com/photoshop/1.0/" (LPWSTR)] == "GS Country" (LPWSTR)
"State" (LPWSTR) ["http://ns.adobe.com/photoshop/1.0/" (LPWSTR)] == "GS Street" (LPWSTR)
"Location" (LPWSTR) ["http://iptc.org/std/Iptc4xmpCore/1.0/xmlns/" (LPWSTR)] == "GS SubLocation" (LPWSTR)

Is this the general recommendation?

What about Location Shown?

Thanks

[StarGeek]

I'm not quite understanding what you're asking.  In what way is location data not standardized? For Country/State/City/Address, you could either use the older XMP tags of
XMP-photoshop:Country
XMP-photoshop:State
XMP-photoshop:City
XMP-iptcCore:Location

The IPTC Photo Metadata Standard does consider these legacy, though they are still widely used.

The LocationShown and LocationCreated are structured tags which are more complex (see Structured Information page) but have corresponding fields for each of these items.  Using the exiftool's flattened names, you have

LocationShownCountryName
LocationShownProvinceState
LocationShownCity
LocationShownSublocation

LocationCreatedCountryName
LocationCreatedProvinceState
LocationCreatedCity
LocationCreatedSublocation

The former legacy tags are more likely to be supported by older programs but more modern programs, such as Adobe programs, would support the structured tags.  Here's an example from an older version of Adobe Bridge with 2 entries for location shown (silly example to have both New York and Los Angeles)

[dusty.camera]

Thanks this is really helpful. What I meant by "not standardized" should probably have read "not universally adopted".

Thanks for answering the question, I think I'll use the LocationShown\LocationCreated structs.

[StarGeek]

What I meant by "not standardized" should probably have read "not universally adopted".

That I can pretty much agree with.

The LocationCreated/LocationShown are complex and best filled out through a GUI like Adobe Bridge, IMO.  It can be easy to make a mistake.

Myself, I use the older legacy XMP tags, as it's simpler to deal with and my photo management program works well with them.