GPS Coordinates differ on Flickr

[Gadifer]

Good morning,

I set the GPS Coordinates for a couple photos in PM 4.6 using the provided Google map, accepted the locations, and then applied them to the appropriate photos and everything looked good. When I uploaded the photos to Flickr and looked at the Additional Information I saw that one of the photos was listed as being in Taskhkent Uzbekistan and the other in Talas Kyrgyzstan when both where taken in Massachusetts.

When I geotag the same photo in ViewNX the coordinates come out right. Has anyone seen this before? Is it possibly something in my settings? I'm working on a MacBook running OSX 10.5.6. The photos were JPEGs extracted from Nikon NEFs in PM. The GPS coordinates were set when they were still NEFs.

Thanks,

Marc

[Kirk Baker]

Marc,

Good morning,

I set the GPS Coordinates for a couple photos in PM 4.6 using the provided Google map, accepted the locations, and then applied them to the appropriate photos and everything looked good. When I uploaded the photos to Flickr and looked at the Additional Information I saw that one of the photos was listed as being in Taskhkent Uzbekistan and the other in Talas Kyrgyzstan when both where taken in Massachusetts.

When I geotag the same photo in ViewNX the coordinates come out right. Has anyone seen this before? Is it possibly something in my settings? I'm working on a MacBook running OSX 10.5.6. The photos were JPEGs extracted from Nikon NEFs in PM. The GPS coordinates were set when they were still NEFs.

Does Flickr show you the actual GPS coordinates?

What happens if you set the GPS coordinates on the JPEGs directly before you send them to Flickr?

-Kirk

[RonD200]

I had the same thing happen to me after I uploaded some photos to Smugmug. So I checked the Lat and Long. in Smugmug and found out that the Longitude number was correct but the "-" in front of the Longitude was missing so instead of my photo being in Old Fort Niagara it ended up in Europe after putting the "-" back the photo was in the right location.  Funny thing is the Coordinates were correct in PM4.6

I'm not sure if the missing "-" sign was caused by the Smugmug uploader or something on Smugmugs end.

Ron

[Kirk Baker]

Ron,

I had the same thing happen to me after I uploaded some photos to Smugmug. So I checked the Lat and Long. in Smugmug and found out that the Longitude number was correct but the "-" in front of the Longitude was missing so instead of my photo being in Old Fort Niagara it ended up in Europe after putting the "-" back the photo was in the right location.  Funny thing is the Coordinates were correct in PM4.6

I'm not sure if the missing "-" sign was caused by the Smugmug uploader or something on Smugmugs end.

If you upload with something other than the SmugMug uploader template in Photo Mechanic, does SmugMug get the coordinates right?

-Kirk

[RonD200]

Ron,

I had the same thing happen to me after I uploaded some photos to Smugmug. So I checked the Lat and Long. in Smugmug and found out that the Longitude number was correct but the "-" in front of the Longitude was missing so instead of my photo being in Old Fort Niagara it ended up in Europe after putting the "-" back the photo was in the right location.  Funny thing is the Coordinates were correct in PM4.6

I'm not sure if the missing "-" sign was caused by the Smugmug uploader or something on Smugmugs end.

If you upload with something other than the SmugMug uploader template in Photo Mechanic, does SmugMug get the coordinates right?

-Kirk

Using Smugmug's uploaders a few times I've had the coordinates off now and then but just by a few miles,  but this is the first time I've had the "-" sign dropped on the Longitude.  I'm wondering if it's a GPS conversion issue. I have PM set to decimal degrees (hddd.ddddd°) which is what Smugmug uses but I notice that when I do a Show Map, the balloon on the map uses Degrees, Minutes, Seconds and Decimal seconds (hddd°mm’ss.s”) but it shows my coordinates as decimal degrees in the the Show Map Info text as I have it set in the PM Preferences.  Which format is used  by PM's Smugmug uploader when the file is sent?

 Or maybe CaptureNX2 is messing something up with the embedded Jpeg after an edit but I'm not sure about that theory because even after the edit PM reads the GPS information correctly and displays it with show map correctly.  Also this doesn't happen to every photo it only happens once in awhile.

Ron

[Gadifer]

Kirk,

I'm going to investigate Ron's Capture NX2 theory a bit. Flickr does show the actual GPS coordinates. When I downloaded one of the images I had a problem with and set its GPS coordinates and sent it back up to Fickr everything worked correctly. I then took a random JPEG and uploaded it to Flickr via PM and it too worked correctly. This, however, was all done on a different MacBook than the one that uploaded the files with the incorrect reporting on Flickr. I doubt that has anything to do with it but it's worth noting. I'll keep playing around with it.

Marc

[Kirk Baker]

Ron,

I had the same thing happen to me after I uploaded some photos to Smugmug. So I checked the Lat and Long. in Smugmug and found out that the Longitude number was correct but the "-" in front of the Longitude was missing so instead of my photo being in Old Fort Niagara it ended up in Europe after putting the "-" back the photo was in the right location.  Funny thing is the Coordinates were correct in PM4.6

I'm not sure if the missing "-" sign was caused by the Smugmug uploader or something on Smugmugs end.

If you upload with something other than the SmugMug uploader template in Photo Mechanic, does SmugMug get the coordinates right?

Using Smugmug's uploaders a few times I've had the coordinates off now and then but just by a few miles,  but this is the first time I've had the "-" sign dropped on the Longitude.  I'm wondering if it's a GPS conversion issue. I have PM set to decimal degrees (hddd.ddddd°) which is what Smugmug uses but I notice that when I do a Show Map, the balloon on the map uses Degrees, Minutes, Seconds and Decimal seconds (hddd°mm’ss.s”) but it shows my coordinates as decimal degrees in the the Show Map Info text as I have it set in the PM Preferences.  Which format is used  by PM's Smugmug uploader when the file is sent?

 Or maybe CaptureNX2 is messing something up with the embedded Jpeg after an edit but I'm not sure about that theory because even after the edit PM reads the GPS information correctly and displays it with show map correctly.  Also this doesn't happen to every photo it only happens once in awhile.

Photo Mechanic currently does nothing at all to tell SmugMug about the coordinates in its uploader.  The GPS data is stored in the image itself and SmugMug is likely misinterpreting the data when it extracts it from the image.  The EXIF GPS tags don't have different formats: there is only one format.  GPS in XMP is done differently than EXIF but likewise there is only one format.

-Kirk

[RonD200]

Ok Kirk, thanks for the information, it's probably a glitch now and then on the Smugmug side, it doesn't happen very often just every once in awhile.  If I recall I may have had a problem also with the GPS coordinates on Smugmug after tagging the photos with Robogeo. Another common denominator maybe something that CaptureNX2 is doing after processing.

Ron

[Gadifer]

Kirk,

I think I've isolated the problem to NEFs uploaded directly from PM. If I ingest and decide that the photo is fine as is, set the GPS coordinates, and then upload (and thus have PM convert the NEF to a JPEG) it shows up in Flickr as being in Kyrgyzstan. If I save as a JPEG first and then set GPS coordinates they show up correctly on Flickr.

Thanks,

Marc

[Kirk Baker]

Marc,

I think I've isolated the problem to NEFs uploaded directly from PM. If I ingest and decide that the photo is fine as is, set the GPS coordinates, and then upload (and thus have PM convert the NEF to a JPEG) it shows up in Flickr as being in Kyrgyzstan. If I save as a JPEG first and then set GPS coordinates they show up correctly on Flickr.

OK, good to know.  I'll look at that today.

-Kirk

[dennis]

I found the problem and the fix will be in 4.6.1.  PM isn't clearing all of the bytes that make up the Exif tags for latitude and longitude "reference".  These tags hold a single character 'N' or 'S' or 'E' or 'W', but there are four bytes of storage.  Flickr's site (and maybe others) isn't liking the fact that there may be non-zero bytes (especially right) after the single reference character.  I've made it so PM will clear these bytes first.  This is the reason this behavior was random because the other 3 bytes were random data (sometimes a zero would follow the reference char and it would be fine).  Also, I think the sites assume North and East (i.e. "positive") unless otherwise "proven" to be South or West (by finding the 'S' or 'W' characters with following zeroes).

Hope that helps to explain what's happening.

In the meantime, try geotagging in PM after extracting the JPEG from the RAW file.

--dennis

[Gadifer]

Thanks. Will do.

[RonD200]

The 4.6.1 update has fixed the GPS location problem I had when uploading Geotagged files to Smugmug.  Recently uploaded photos to Smugmug now show up in the correct location.

Thanks,
Ron

[JenniferRT66]

Good afternoon,

I am evaluating PM, and so far like what I see. One question I have, might be related to this discussion or others on GPS coordinates.

I have browsed through several folders of photos which have already been geotagged using RoboGeo. Most seem to be OK, but I am finding some that aren't. The only pattern I have found is in most cases, the problem lies with a JPG file that was generated from a NEF. I had first geotagged the NEF, then converted to JPG in photoshop. 

In PM, I have selected two photos, and checked the location on the map (Right click > Show Map). In most cases, the location is of the NEF is correct, and the JPG is incorrect or indicating that there is no GPS data. The odd thing is that the same JPG file displays correctly in Google Earth, and in Flickr. But PM is showing it incorrectly. I viewed the coordinates in PM, and the JPG and NEF show different coordinates. When viewing the metadata for the same two files in Adobe Bridge, the coordinates are the same.

The other photos which also have this problem are some photos shot as JPG, also geotagged with RoboGeo and seem to be correct in Google Earth and Flickr, but not when viewed in PM. These files were odd in that I was struggling with RoboGeo and Picasa arguing with each other at the time. I got some errors, but the resulting files appeared to be OK in Google and Flickr.

Hopefully, each circumstance above is an anomaly of my prior tagging process, or a bug in PM that is in the process of being fixed.

I'm going to go for a test drive (so to speak), take some photos and generate a GPX track, and do some geotagging, keyword tagging, etc.

So far I like PM, and am hoping to buy it.

[Kirk Baker]

Jennifer,

I am evaluating PM, and so far like what I see. One question I have, might be related to this discussion or others on GPS coordinates.

I have browsed through several folders of photos which have already been geotagged using RoboGeo. Most seem to be OK, but I am finding some that aren't. The only pattern I have found is in most cases, the problem lies with a JPG file that was generated from a NEF. I had first geotagged the NEF, then converted to JPG in photoshop. 

In PM, I have selected two photos, and checked the location on the map (Right click > Show Map). In most cases, the location is of the NEF is correct, and the JPG is incorrect or indicating that there is no GPS data. The odd thing is that the same JPG file displays correctly in Google Earth, and in Flickr. But PM is showing it incorrectly. I viewed the coordinates in PM, and the JPG and NEF show different coordinates. When viewing the metadata for the same two files in Adobe Bridge, the coordinates are the same.

The other photos which also have this problem are some photos shot as JPG, also geotagged with RoboGeo and seem to be correct in Google Earth and Flickr, but not when viewed in PM. These files were odd in that I was struggling with RoboGeo and Picasa arguing with each other at the time. I got some errors, but the resulting files appeared to be OK in Google and Flickr.

If you're willing to share the problematic photos with us, we can take a look at them and see why you're having difficulty with them.  Please click on my name to the left of this message, then click on the 'personal message' link.  I will respond with upload instructions.

-Kirk