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.


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