Hi Mark,

Yes, looking at my sample images I can see there is some confusion about this, although I don't know why because both the EXIF and XMP specifications are quite clear. The correct format is "2.2.0.0". In XMP this is stored as a simple text string, while in EXIF exiftool handles translation of this to the 4-byte value. ExifTool does no translation when writing XMP:GPSVersionID, so the string must be in the correct format to begin with. When writing EXIF:GPSVersionID exiftool also accepts spaces instead of decimal points between the numbers.

- Phil

Phil,
I use PhotoMechanic to Geotag my RAW images, which does set the GPSVersionID. I have some TIF's and JPG's that seem to have the GPS coords but are missing the VersionID so I'm fixing these images.

I'm writing a shell script (bash, OSX) to test all my images for the correct value but am noticing some inconsistencies if the tag is not present. The exiftool command i'm using is:

If a file has a GPSVersionID tag which is not equal to 2.2.0.0 then this command works. If the file has no GPSVersionID tag at all then it fails - if I add -v2 I see the message:
Condition: Use of uninitialized value $info{"gpsversionid"} in string eq - ./IMG_0256.jpg
for each image.

Can you suggest a test that will work for the wrong value and also for images that don't have the tag at all?

Mark