How to Fix GPS Coordinates and Time of a Photo

2022-12-10

Context and Problem

During a holiday trip, I received some photos on paper which I wanted to digitize and add to Google Photos. To ensure these pictures are discoverable, I wanted to ensure they have the right GPS coordinates and time.

How should I fix the Exif metadata?

Solution

The following was tested on Ubuntu 22.04.01 LTS.

Install exiftool:

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sudo apt install libimage-exiftool-perl

Note down the GPS Latitude, GPS Longitude and local time:

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GPS_LAT=48.059457
GPS_LAT_REF=N  # N = North, S = South
GPS_LON=20.74614
GPS_LON_REF=E  # E = East, W = West
LOCAL_TIME=2022-07-27T201406  # Prefer ISO 8601

Set the Exif tags:

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exiftool 00*.jpg \
    -gpslatitude=$GPS_LAT \
    -gpslongitude=$GPS_LON \
    -gpslatituderef=$GPS_LAT_REF \
    -gpslongituderef=$GPS_LON_REF \
    -AllDates=$LOCAL_TIME

🎉

Upload to Google Photos and check the result!

Gotchas

Exif times (DateTime, DateTimeOriginal and DateTimeDigitized) assume local time. Use GPSDateTime is you want to store GPS Time, which is timezone-independent.