Copies georeferencing information from one file to another via PAM .aux.xml files

copygeo.py

#!/usr/bin/env python

# This script copies georeferencing information from one file to another that has none,
# via the creation of an .aux.xml file (so it should work with any image format).

# This is useful if, for example, you've edited a GeoTIFF in Photoshop,
# and saved the result as a JPG that you'd still like to be geo-aware for use
# with GDAL or QGIS.

# Requires GDAL command line tools, because re-making gdalbuildvrt in python
# sounded super hard.

import sys
from subprocess import check_output
import xml.etree.ElementTree as et

if len(sys.argv)<2:
  sys.exit('Usage: copygeo.py <georeferenced input file> <non-georeferenced output file>');

inputFile = sys.argv[1]
outputFile = sys.argv[2] + '.aux.xml'

# make a VRT file from the first argument, using gdalbuildvrt command line tool
vrt = check_output(['gdalbuildvrt', '-q', '/vsistdout/', inputFile])

# parse vrt as xml
vrt = et.fromstring(vrt)

# grab the <SRS> and <GeoTransform> tags from the VRT (they're in the format we want for a PAM .aux.xml file)
# this assumes there's only one SRS and GeoTransform tag. reasonable assumption? i'm not sure.
for SRS in vrt.findall('SRS'):
  SRS=SRS.text

for GeoTransform in vrt.findall('GeoTransform'):
  GeoTransform=GeoTransform.text

# build a PAM file manually
PAMstring = (''+
'<PAMDataset>\n'+
'  <SRS>'+SRS+'</SRS>\n'+
'  <GeoTransform>'+GeoTransform+'</GeoTransform>\n'+
'  <Metadata>\n'+
'    <MDI key="AREA_OR_POINT">Area</MDI>\n'+
'  </Metadata>\n'+
'  <PAMRasterBand band="1">\n'+
'    <Metadata domain="IMAGE_STRUCTURE">\n'+
'      <MDI key="COMPRESSION">JPEG</MDI>\n'+
'    </Metadata>\n'+
'    <Metadata>\n'+
'      <MDI key="LAYER_TYPE">athematic</MDI>\n'+
'    </Metadata>\n'+
'  </PAMRasterBand>\n'+
'</PAMDataset>\n'+
'')

f = open(outputFile,"w")
f.write(PAMstring)
f.close()

i dunno if all that junk with key="COMPRESSION" and LAYER_TYPE athematic is necessary, but it seemed to work fine so i left it in! ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Don't use this, use rio edit-info unreferenced.jpg --like referenced.tif --all