Reducing GPS accuracy in photos
Here's a quick one-liner to reduce the precision of location stored in a photo's EXIF metadata:
BASHexiftool -c "%.2f" -TagsFromFile @ -GPSLatitude -GPSLongitude photo.jpg
(Thanks to the EXIFtool Forum for their help.)
Why is this useful?
Modern phones automatically attach a GPS location to every photo you take. GPS resolution is around 10 metres. When you share your photos, you're often sharing your precise location.
I wanted to upload some photos to the Wikimedia Commons of an interesting junction box installed in our home. I didn't want my home location stored on the Internet forever - but I thought it would be useful to include a rough location.
The above command takes a location of 51.123456,0.987654
and returns 51.12,0.98
. That's good enough to roughly show the location, without revealing it exactly.
hawkfalcon said on twitter.com:
Very cool! I want this in an iOS shortcut 😬
Quentin Stafford-Fraser says:
Brilliantly simple. Love it.