CoreForce
Level 1 (48 points)
Photos for Mac

Q: EXIF data international characters screw on edit

Anyone having a similar issue?

Maybe  hint how to workaround it?

 

Images have geo location data set, when I import those to Photos app, the EXIF tags are preserved just fine.

As soon as an image is edited in Photos app, international characters are screwed up.

 

I see that when publishing from Photos to sites like Flickr. unedited images do fine on EXIF tags, images edited in Photos do show corrupted EXIF tags.

 

Examples:

Original image, EXIF data with geo locations:

  • GPS Latitude Ref - North
  • GPS Latitude - 64 deg 8' 58.14"
  • GPS Longitude Ref - West
  • GPS Longitude - 21 deg 55' 56.28"
  • City - Reykjavík
  • Province- State -Höfuðborgarsvæðið
  • Country- Primary Location Name -Island

 

After editing with Photos app this becomes:

  • GPS Latitude Ref - North
  • GPS Latitude - 64 deg 8' 58.14"
  • GPS Longitude Ref - West
  • GPS Longitude - 21 deg 55' 56.28"
  • City - ReykjavÌk
  • State - HˆfuborgarsvÊi
  • Country - Island

 

PS: There was a time when Apple was quite strong on internationalization...

iMac with Retina 5K display, OS X El Capitan (10.11.6)

Posted on Aug 9, 2016 12:39 PM

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CoreForce

Q: EXIF data international characters screw on edit

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  • Helpful answers

  • by Tom Gewecke,

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke Aug 9, 2016 2:32 PM in response to CoreForce
    Level 9 (79,115 points)
    Aug 9, 2016 2:32 PM in response to CoreForce

    For what it's worth, ð  being displayed as  indicates the original Latin 1 encoding is being read as if it were MacRoman encoding.

  • by CoreForce,

    CoreForce CoreForce Aug 9, 2016 11:01 PM in response to Tom Gewecke
    Level 1 (48 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Aug 9, 2016 11:01 PM in response to Tom Gewecke

    My assumption is the Photos app on editing an image is _writing_ EXIF data with a wrong character encoding.

  • by Tom Gewecke,

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke Aug 10, 2016 3:03 AM in response to CoreForce
    Level 9 (79,115 points)
    Aug 10, 2016 3:03 AM in response to CoreForce

    CoreForce wrote:

     

    My assumption is the Photos app on editing an image is _writing_ EXIF data with a wrong character encoding.

    To me it looks like the underlying data bytes are the same, but they are being viewed with different encodings.  Sorry I do not know anything about exif data:  does it normally contain an encoding marker?    Is the data messed up when viewed with a different app?

  • by CoreForce,

    CoreForce CoreForce Aug 10, 2016 5:54 AM in response to Tom Gewecke
    Level 1 (48 points)
    Photos for Mac
    Aug 10, 2016 5:54 AM in response to Tom Gewecke

    The EXIF data of an image is always messed up in the same way after an edit in Photos.

    This can be verified by comparing both original and modified versions of the images in different tools and online services.

     

    Here is a bit of about EXIF metadata in images with respect to encodings:

    http://code.flickr.net/2010/01/08/a-chinese-puzzle-unicode-and-exif-metadata-par sing/

     

    What I see is that apps with dedicated EXIF handling (like DxO) do keep the EXIF data in the right encoding and format (preserving international characters), while others that rely on OSX functionality screw it (like Photos, Pixelmator).

  • by Tom Gewecke,

    Tom Gewecke Tom Gewecke Aug 10, 2016 6:39 AM in response to CoreForce
    Level 9 (79,115 points)
    Aug 10, 2016 6:39 AM in response to CoreForce

    CoreForce wrote:

     

    The EXIF data of an image is always messed up in the same way after an edit in Photos.

    This can be verified by comparing both original and modified versions of the images in different tools and online services.

     

    Do you know if you see the same Apple symbol and using a Windows machine to view the data?