Glossary
GPS IFD
The GPS IFD is the sub-directory of an EXIF block that holds location data, kept separate from the camera and exposure fields.
Updated
EXIF is organised as a set of directories, and location gets one of its own. It holds latitude and longitude — each stored as degrees, minutes and seconds plus a reference letter for hemisphere — along with altitude, bearing and a timestamp for the fix.
Because it is self-contained, it can be removed on its own. That is the mechanism behind removing GPS while keeping the rest of the metadata: drop this one directory and leave the others intact.
The degrees-minutes-seconds encoding is why coordinates sometimes appear mangled in tools that expect decimal degrees, and why a value can look wrong when it is merely differently represented.
Related terms
- Geotag — A geotag is the geographic location recorded inside a photo at the moment it was taken.
- IFD — An Image File Directory is the table structure EXIF uses to store tags, inherited from the TIFF specification.
- EXIF — EXIF is the metadata standard cameras use to record how, when and where a photo was taken, stored inside the image file itself.