Deep dives into camera EXIF metadata, IPTC tags, and image copyright info.
5 articles
A photo sent the ordinary way arrives without its coordinates. The identical file sent as a document arrives with them intact. Here is the evidence for each, and the popular claims that cannot be sourced at all.
Geotagging is the act of storing a location inside a photo file itself. Here is exactly which EXIF tags hold it, and what happens to them when you upload.
Several controls that look identical do completely different things, and one of them refuses to touch a camera-written location at all. Here is how to clear the location and confirm it is gone.
A photo carries three blocks of metadata and most of two of them are yours to change. Here is the working subset: each tag, what it holds, why you would touch it, and what reads it.
The coordinates are already inside the file. Here is how to read them out, why the number arrives without its minus sign, and which tags tell you whether the location is a measurement or a guess.