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Assigning a GPS location to a photo no longer works properly (Photos v6.0 in Mac OS Big Sur v11.0.1)

As of the new "Photos" application (v6.0) in Mac OS Big Sur (v11.0.1), assigning a GPS (latitude, longitude) location to a photo no longer works properly.

For example, if you try to assign the location

-40.87292,172.45605

to a photo, you end up with an incorrect location - hundreds of miles away from where it should be. The same thing happens if you paste the location in degrees,minutes,seconds format: 40° 52' 22.5" S,172° 27' 21.798" E

This used to work perfectly in the previous version of Photos (on Mac OS Catalina)


MacBook Pro 16″, macOS 11.0

Posted on Nov 14, 2020 6:32 PM

Reply
9 replies

Nov 15, 2020 3:04 AM in response to jotzet

Most important is, that we explain why the precise locations are so important and why need the ability to assign gPS coordinates, not just predefined location names.

For example, most of my photos have been taken outside the cities, in sparsely populated areas. They are landscape photos or wildlife photos, taken during sailing trips or hiking tours. I can no longer show the track of a sailing trip or hiking trip. The pins are all in in the same place. It has been bad enough that Photos does not show the the altitude and does not even allow us to set the altitude with an AppleScript. On hiking trips in the mountains it matters at which altitude a photo has been taken.

Dec 29, 2020 10:21 AM in response to finlayson

I use Applescript to copy latitude,longitud from one picture in photos, the another script to paste those coordinates into one or more pictures. Pasting in this way writes the correct coordinates into the picture, while pasting into the location fields of the Information pop-up window triggers a search and replaces your coordinates with some other place (in text format).

Here are the scripts:

COPY

-- on run {}


tell application "Photos"


activate



set imageSel to (get selection) -- get the selected image



if imageSel is {} then


display dialog "Please select an image." buttons ¬


"OK" with icon caution default button "OK"


end if


tell the first item of imageSel


set loc to get the location --retrieve longitude and latitude as list


set lati to (the first item of loc) as string


set longi to (the second item of loc) as string


set alti to get the altitude as string -- retrieve the altitude



end tell


set tim to get (the date of the first item of imageSel)


set tim to tim as string



-- display the result in a dialog panel. Just for checking


set panel_message to "Date:


" & tim & "


Latitude: " & lati & "


Longitude: " & longi & "


Altitude: " & alti & "


 


Lat/Lon copied to the clipboard"


display dialog panel_message buttons ¬


"OK" with icon note default button "OK"



end tell




-- copy the GPS data to the clipboard


#set clipboard_message to " " & lati & " " & longi & " " & alti


set clipboard_message to lati & " " & longi


set the clipboard to clipboard_message




return clipboard_message



PASTE:

-- on run {}


tell application "Photos"


activate



set imageSel to (get selection) -- get the selected image



if imageSel is {} then


display dialog "Please select one or more images." buttons ¬


"OK" with icon caution default button "OK"


end if



set lat_lon to the clipboard --retrieve longitude and latitude from clipboard


set oldDelimiters to AppleScript's text item delimiters


set AppleScript's text item delimiters to " "


set lat_lon_array to every text item of lat_lon


set AppleScript's text item delimiters to oldDelimiters


--display dialog lat_lon_array



set counter to 0


repeat with one_image in imageSel


tell one_image


set location to lat_lon_array


end tell


set counter to (counter + 1)


end repeat



display dialog "Coordinates pasted into " & counter & " images:


" & lat_lon buttons ¬


"OK" with icon note default button "OK"


end tell



Dec 29, 2020 2:55 PM in response to léonie

Reviewing my old photos - that I thought I had geotagged correctly - I realize that you're correct. This behavior (moving a newly-geotagged location from the entered GPS coordinates to the nearest town) started happening sometime between September 18th and October 1st - i.e., before the introduction of Mac OS Big Sur.


So, the good news is that Apple could probably fix this easily, simply by upgrading their online geotagging servers. The bad news is that they have not yet done this.

Assigning a GPS location to a photo no longer works properly (Photos v6.0 in Mac OS Big Sur v11.0.1)

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