Extract GPS data from JPEG images with imago

Many photos carry GPS coordinates in their EXIF metadata. Phones add them to remember where a picture was taken, and social networks use them to suggest a location.

In an investigation the same data can tell you a lot about where a picture was shot. With imago, an open-source Python tool I wrote, extracting GPS data from a large set of JPEG files is quick and easy.

1. Install imago

Follow the setup instructions on the GitHub page. I suggest installing it with pip.

2. Run imago with the GPS option

imago -i exif-samples/jpg/gps/ -g

• -i — input directory with the JPEG images
• -g — extract GPS data

If you don’t have images with GPS data at hand, you can use the samples in the exif-samples GitHub repository, as I did for this example.

While it runs, imago shows the progress of the extraction:

3. Read the results

When it finishes, imago writes a CSV file (imago.csv) in the directory where you ran it, with all the information extracted from the images. For GPS, the columns to look at are Parsed_GPS_Latitude and Parsed_GPS_Longitude: latitude and longitude in decimal degrees.

These are the coordinates extracted from the exif-samples images:

File name	GPS latitude	GPS longitude
DSCN0042.jpg	43.464455	11.8814783333
DSCN0027.jpg	43.4684416667	11.881515
DSCN0025.jpg	43.468365	11.881635
DSCN0010.jpg	43.4674483333	11.8851266667
DSCN0040.jpg	43.4660116666	11.8791116666
DSCN0012.jpg	43.4671566667	11.885395
DSCN0038.jpg	43.467255	11.8792133333
DSCN0021.jpg	43.4670816667	11.8845383333
DSCN0029.jpg	43.4682433333	11.8801716666

With these coordinates it’s easy to plot on a map the places where the pictures were taken:

4. From coordinates to places

imago also tries to translate the coordinates into a readable address (city, country, postcode…). When this works, you’ll find extra columns in the CSV. For example, for DSCN0021.jpg imago returns:

• city: Arezzo
• residential: Arezzo
• county: AR
• suburb: La Torre
• state: Tos
• postcode: 52100
• country_code: it
• country: Italia
• pedestrian: Piazza del Duomo
• place_of_worship: Duomo di Arezzo

Questions about imago or GPS extraction? Leave a comment below.