My son is travelling overseas and is sending me photos. How can he send photos that maintain all metadata including location, GPS, date, time, etc., so that I can load them into a mapping app which pins photos to map locations?
By sending you the original images. But that question is too vague: what's the source of these images? Phone? Camera? are they managed or edited in an app? What app(s)?, and finally how are they sent?
I thought it would be interesting to try some things but, as Yer_Man said, it's hard to know what will work for you without more information.
In messages and in mail, privacy concerns require the location information be stripped from the file when it is sent. One way to prevent that is to fool the Mac/iPhone into thinking it's something else. On a Mac, you can "compress" the picture by right-clicking it and selecting compress. This doesn't make a file smaller (jpegs are already compressed,) but it changes it to a zip file that doesn't look like a picture, and it will be "uncompressed," usually automatically, at the other end, into the original pictures with all the metadata.
I tried sending a pictures file, like doc_1234.jpg, by changing it to doc_1234.rlt so the Mac wouldn't know it was a picture. When I received the email, I downloaded the attachment and changed .rlt to .jpg, and it opened with all the metadata intact.
There are compression and encryption apps for iPhone on the App store-- I haven't tried them. Also, I haven't tried 3rd party apps like WhatsApp which may work for you.
The photos he sends would normally be sent iphone to iphone, using WhatsApp. If sending that way the original image is automatically stripped of location data and possibly other data as well.
I like the method you are suggesting, i.e. disguising the file so that it is not recognised as an image file.
The problem with doing that, from a practical point of view, my son is not going to want to bother with compressing or renaming every file before sending. He will often send a batch of photos without even an accompanying message telling me where they were taken.
If I could just get him to provide a location for each individual photo then I could edit the files myself and insert the location in the metadata. That would be enough for the map program to position them approximately on the map. But I know he is unlikely to even comply with that. So I guess I’m stuck!
I know, a few years ago, all the original metadata used to arrive intact with each photo sent, but I guess in today’s world there is the chance of people snitching and using the data for nefarious purposes.
Oh well, thanks for your suggestions.
You might try Google Photos because its shared albums do not nuke locations for privacy issues. Google Photos can access iOS photos and maybe automatically grab new footage (I dislike that so I have turned that off in iOS Google Photos settings).
Matti, that sounds like it may be easy enough for even a traveling son to do!
How to send photos with all original metadata
