PM+ continues to provide erroneous GPS information to Flickr

[OldRadioGuy]

 
1. Select a thumbnail for an image in the contact sheet
2. Image -> Set GPS Coordinates
3. In the Set GPS Coordinates window that comes up, enter the location description in the location cell under the map
4. Left-mouse-click the “Get GPS” button
5. Map changes to location, Left-mouse reposition the location icon, if needed.
6. Left-mouse click the “Accept” button
7. Left-mouse click the “Apply” button
8. Left-mouse click the “Close” button
9. File -> Upload
10. Use the File Uploader and send to Flickr using presets selected previously
11. Flickr shows incorrect location on Flickr map — in this test case, a location in China, which should be a location in Texas.

I have been experiencing this error with the last two or three revisions of PM+ beta. I reported this earlier when I made a comparison with another program allowing assignment of map GPS information.

The new public beta of ON1 Photo RAW 2020 has GPS map capabilities, and I tried it, too, for assignment information and then upload bypassing PM+. Flickr shows the correct location with this app.

So, I believe it is a PM+ bug.

macOS Mojave Version 10.14.5
iMac (Retina 5K, 27-inch, 2017)
Processor 4.2 GHz Intel Core i7
Memory 32 GB 2400 MHz DDR4
Graphics Radeon Pro 580 8 GB

[Hayo Baan]

Hmm, this seems to work fine for me (i.e., Lightroom shows the correct location). Can you upload a dummy image with the coordinates set? Also include a version where you set them with ON1. Oh, and also include the images as can be found on Flickr (perhaps it's the upload that mangles the data).

[Odd Skjaeveland]

Flickr shows incorrect location on Flickr map — in this test case, a location in China, which should be a location in Texas.

Sounds like an East--West encoding issue, I believe we also saw something like this for the map in early releases of PM6.

If Texas means, say, longitude 100 degrees West your photo would be at 100 degrees East. East--West may be encoded by including "E" or "W" or a plus/minus sign.

I think I read some time back that Flickr requires the +/- (as in -100.0 rather than 100.0 W).

https://tnp.uservoice.com/knowledgebase/articles/172110-latitude-longitude-formats-and-conversion

Edit:
Located some Flickr specific info and include a couple of links here:

https://www.flickr.com/services/api/flickr.places.findByLatLon.html
https://www.flickr.com/help/forum/en-us/72157624619990394/

[Hayo Baan]

Hi Odd,

The links you provided though about map coordinates don't really have to do with this issue I think.

• The first link refers to what I think is just a general story about how to convert coordinates to different formats.
• The second link was specificaly about the API used to ask Flickr to find images based on their location. Here they indeed use +/- coordinates instead of hemispheres. But this has nothing to do with the coordinates as should be in the metadata.
• The third link seems to be about someone who had conflicting GPS location data in his files which confused Flickr.[//li]
  

The metadata standard is pretty clear about how the coordinates should be recorded. For instance, the coordinates in the EXIF data are always positive (the coordinates are made up from 3 unsigned rational numbers for degrees minutes and seconds) and they must always include the hemisphere. As far as I can tell, this is also how PM records the data.

To investigate further I really need example files a. image with coordinates set in PM, b. image with coordinates set in ON1, c. image as available in Flickr.

[Odd Skjaeveland]

...The metadata standard is pretty clear about how the coordinates should be recorded.

I thought more in the direction of differences between formats used for communication than the format used for digital storage.

My old copy of the Exif spec says E and W for longitude reference, but I am pretty sure I have seen +/- used in communications.
Similar for various ways of communicating the coordinates in degrees, minutes and seconds of arc, or in decimal degrees. We communicate time as hours, minutes and seconds even if it is digitally stored as the number of seconds elapsed since some historical point in time ("epoch"). I thought more of what Flickr accepts/shows than what Flickr (or PM for that matter) actually stores.

The document https://sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/TagNames/GPS.html has the following note for Exif tag 0x0003 GPSLongitudeRef "(ExifTool will also accept a number when writing this tag, positive for east longitudes or negative for west, or a string ending in E or W)..."
 
Perhaps OldRadioGuy could provide the files you need and also check if the Flickr geo marker is placed at the correct longitude value (meridian), but in the wrong direction (East)?

[Hayo Baan]

...The metadata standard is pretty clear about how the coordinates should be recorded.

I thought more in the direction of differences between formats used for communication than the format used for digital storage.

Right, in communicating we can use any of the forms, as long as we understand what we mean. This, however, is unrelated to the issue since the metadata must be in the format as specified, otherwise it wouldn't work

My old copy of the Exif spec says E and W for longitude reference, but I am pretty sure I have seen +/- used in communications.
Similar for various ways of communicating the coordinates in degrees, minutes and seconds of arc, or in decimal degrees. We communicate time as hours, minutes and seconds even if it is digitally stored as the number of seconds elapsed since some historical point in time ("epoch"). I thought more of what Flickr accepts/shows than what Flickr (or PM for that matter) actually stores.

The document https://sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/TagNames/GPS.html has the following note for Exif tag 0x0003 GPSLongitudeRef "(ExifTool will also accept a number when writing this tag, positive for east longitudes or negative for west, or a string ending in E or W)..."

Yes, exiftool is pretty tolerant at what input (and output) it is given. It will however always store it in the file in the correct (binary) form. From what I have seen in the files I analysed, this is exactly what PM is doing, so I can't see why Flickr puts the coordinates on the wrong location (unless they don't follow the specification…).
 

Perhaps OldRadioGuy could provide the files you need and also check if the Flickr geo marker is placed at the correct longitude value (meridian), but in the wrong direction (East)?

Yes, the files I requested will be necessary to analyse what's going on (and where the problem lies).

[Odd Skjaeveland]

Right, in communicating we can use any of the forms, as long as we understand what we mean.

I do not all know what PM tells Flickr, nor do I know what Flickr expects. My guess from the original post (Texas offset eastwards to China) was just that may be one end perhaps gets it wrong in communication even if both ends use the same storage format. If you say that can not happen, you are probably right.

[OldRadioGuy]

While I was preparing a set of comparison images per the suggestion above, I uploaded another new image to Flickr using map location assignment made in PM+. The map location shown by Flickr was correct.

So, a conundrum. I assume my problem was a fluke, but I'll keep monitoring.

Thanks for your comments and suggestions.

Bob

 

[Hayo Baan]

While I was preparing a set of comparison images per the suggestion above, I uploaded another new image to Flickr using map location assignment made in PM+. The map location shown by Flickr was correct.

So, a conundrum. I assume my problem was a fluke, but I'll keep monitoring.

Thanks for your comments and suggestions.

Hi Bob, good to hear it seems to be a non-issue