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Russ Wright
Known Participant
August 3, 2025
Open for Voting

P: Handle OS issue with IPhone GPS data

  • August 3, 2025
  • 1 reply
  • 280 views

When you export unmodified RAW images from MacOS Photos app and ingest them into lightroom, the GPS data isn't handled correctly. This seems to be due to an Apple bug/feature where the XMP contains incorrect 

GPSLongitudeRef (perhaps always set to E). It would be nice if LRC detected the mismatch, the fact that it is an Apple image and then just use the image GPS data, not the XMP GPS data. I have a bash script that uses exiftool to do this for me and it solves the problem but I doubt most people would be happy running a bash script.

All the files here have this issue. They were talken in Colombia so GPSLongitudeRef is "W"

 

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/aa2qr4ls17ovyxfandg3y/AAdsvTLGd4_DTdejeuimp_0?rlkey=kmxhbc8uzom032dazxx5a91pn&e=2&st=9sfobv0b&dl=0

Note I'll remove the above files within a month so I hope the Lightroom team collects the samples before then.

1 reply

R
Russ WrightAuthor
Known Participant
August 4, 2025

I wrote a little SwiftUI app that reads the following 4 GPS metadata fields from the iPhone RAW image and update the corresponding XMP file if they are different (so the RAW image metadata is authorative). That fixes this issue so I'm hoping the LRC team can do something like this. It seems like Apple is not honoring the sign on GPSLongitude (or GPSLatitude) in the XMP file they generate.

 

* GPSLatitude
* GPSLatitudeRef
* GPSLongitude
* GPSLongitudeRef

 

This was the original in .xmp file

         <exif:GPSLatitudeRef>N</exif:GPSLatitudeRef>

         <exif:GPSLatitude>6.0448043333333334</exif:GPSLatitude>

         <exif:GPSLongitudeRef>W</exif:GPSLongitudeRef>

         <exif:GPSLongitude>75.93732</exif:GPSLongitude>

 

Fixed metadata:GPSLongitude is the only difference for my Colombia photos. I ended up converting to degree - decimal minute format which adds the GPSLongitudeRef. Negating the value should also work but doesn't seem to in Lightroom

         <exif:GPSLatitudeRef>N</exif:GPSLatitudeRef>

         <exif:GPSLatitude>6,2.6882600000000068N</exif:GPSLatitude>

         <exif:GPSLongitudeRef>W</exif:GPSLongitudeRef>

         <exif:GPSLongitude>75,56.23919999999998W</exif:GPSLongitude>

johnrellis
johnrellis
Legend
August 4, 2025

Moderators, @Rikk Flohr: Photography, please move to Ideas.

johnrellis
johnrellis
Legend
August 4, 2025

See this thread for a more detailed discussion of the XMP standard versus what Apple Photos generates and additional workarounds, including using Exiftool to repair the coordinates:

https://community.adobe.com/t5/lightroom-classic-discussions/gps-location-imported-from-iphone-has-wrong-hemisphere/m-p/10829873

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