I’ve been taking photos during work inspections on my iPad mini. This is a cellular device, and app I’m using is Site Audit Pro, which has location data enabled. It’s allowing the app to figure out where the photo was taken (and this can be used in the app to watermark the photo with the location).
The app saves the photos to camera roll and therefore syncs to my Photos library on the Mac. Here, when I view the image, I can see the location the photo was taken.
The photos are also uploaded to my NAS using Photosync. This has location data enabled in Photosync so it includes the location EXIF data, so it keeps the photos as they are (i.e. I don’t convert them from HEIC to JPG). However, when I view the same photo on the NAS (or copied to my hard drive from the NAS), this has no location data.
I know Photosync is uploading the location on other photos - as a photo taken outside of the app using the iPad Camera app, has the location showing when viewed on the NAS following upload.
Any ideas what could be causing the discrepancy? I can’t see any settings in Photosync that I’m missing. Does Photos save information outside of the individual images as well?
I can get round this by exporting the photos directly from the Photos app, but Photosync is there to upload the photos straight from my iPhone as a backup, but it’s losing some data which I’m not happy about!
Yes, Photos does keep some metadata in its database. What I would do is get a EXIF viewer from the App Store and examine the metadata on some of the files that don’t seem to be transferring the metadata you want to keep. That will tell you if the metadata is in the photo file or not.
I’m not using Synology Photos, just viewing the files using Finder in Samba.
From what I can see, the data is not stored in the file, as viewing the files in Windows photo directly on the NAS indicates that there is no location data in the file but there is in other photos taken on the day not from Site Audit Pro. I assume that the database is always how Photos knows that this has come from Site Audit Pro within the iPad Photos app when viewing the information.
Therefore @jec0047 seems to be right - the location data is being stored in a database in Photos and therefore if I want the location data in the photos, I’ll need to export the file from Photos, not using Photosync I imagine.
The photos app in Windows also correctly displays the location (incidentally, Immich appears to believe the iPhone coordinates are East, not West and therefore places the photo as taken in the middle of the English Channel).
Opening in Preview directly from the NAS also correctly displays the location of a HEIC, so all the information is still in the file and the Synology hasn’t modified it in anyway.
This is assuming that we’re both referring to stripped as the dictionary defines it as
“having had usable parts or items removed, as for reuse or resale:”, as the data is still there and therefore hasn’t been stripped.
Note that this photo has gone nowhere near Synology Photos. It’s been directly uploaded either via SFTP to SMB to a folder that is separate to where Synology Photos looks for its photos.
OK, I see what you are saying. My bad.
I was trying (poorly obviously) to ensure we both knew
that HEIC is a “container”, and the metadata it supports
is up to the app. Clearly you have your arms around it
Sorry for any confusion.
No problem - I can understand the confusion, as I’m sure I saw something recently about Finder on here not displaying some metadata incorrectly when it was stored on a NAS.
And I have had issues with the EXIF data before - I was using ACDSee on Windows and it removed/changed a lot of EXIF data in files so it was still readable in ACDSee, but Apple Photos couldn’t read it, so did lose some metadata there, so it’s something I’ve had previous experience in losing so trying to prevent it again!
My bad.