P: Improve control over reverse-geocoded Location metadata

Forum|Forum|13 years ago
May 27, 2012
50 replies
3222 views

LR 4.1rc2 under Windows 7 x64The reverse-geocoding function of LR4 is a great feature and a potential time-saver, yet it can lead to some minor disasters.Specifically, there is currently no way to "stabilize" the location metadata that has been automatically filled by LR (displayed in gray italics). Editing any value by hand e.g. a misspelled City name, leads to all other fields (Country, State, Sublocation) being emptied - problematic when filters are effective on these fields, as the photo suddenly disappears and end up with partly missing location info.Possible remedies: when location info has been automatically filled by LR :- provide (only in such a case) a checkbox offering to "keep these values", so they can from then on be appear as 'normal' metadata, and be edited as such without some tricky behaviouror- make these auto-filled values separate from each other, allowing to edit one without discarding all the others. That would also allow the reverse-geocoding feature to work with any photo which has *some* location fields empty, not only those which have *all* (that is: Reverse-geocoding would always fill missing values, yet keeping any user-defined ones - let's assume photographers know better than Google where they have been shooting...)My preference would rather go to the first solution, as it appears to give more control without making the inner workings of reverse-geocoding too complex.

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pjmonline

Participating Frequently

When a photo has GPD data, the Lightroom Map module shows suggested location data in gray italics. These can be accepted by clicking on the location element such as City. However so far as I can tell, each element (City, State/Province, Sub-location etc) has to be accepted individually - and for each photo. Multiple image selections do not work unless GPS co-ordinates are identical (not just close-by).

It would be very helpful to have an option to auto-select this data for all images in a selection or collection.

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FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor

Inspiring

Thanks! Been awhile to get a reply until now as my topic got merged with another one. Workarounds 1 and 3 I know, the first not being useful for 100,000 photos, the Any Tag cmd I didn't know and seems the most easy and interesting. I'll try it out this weekend.

johnrellis

Legend

This problem behavior is present in LR CC 2015.8 / 6.8 too. The problem occurs with the "unconfirmed" locations that are in grey italics (Windows) or unreadable dark grey (Mac) -- though such locations are exported, they can't be used in file renaming templates.

Several workarounds to this bad design (see the previous posts for details):

- Commit each field in each photo individually.
- Use the free Any Tag command to batch-confirm the locations.
- Don't use LR for geotagging -- use Geosetter or some other program that's better thought out.

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FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor

Inspiring

Hi, when exporting or renaming photos in LR5, there is the possibility to use metadata from the photos to create filenames. It's also possible to use location metadata retrieved through the reverse geo-encoding function. Well, it should be and used to be. This worked fine in Lightroom 4 but no longer in LR5 (since LR5 was out, and now with 5.3 it still doesn't work). City, Country and ISO country code were retrieved from google, but cannot be used when creating file names at export or batch renaming in the library. I have all the options checked in the catalog prefs under the metadata tab. It's not a major thing but inconvenient when I want to use it when exporting landscapes, etc

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FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor

Inspiring

Hi John,
thank you for your tip. I checked "Any Tag" and JF's Geoencoding Support and both works well.

johnrellis

Legend

I agree that it's a big design misfeature. As a workaround, see the Commit Locations command of the Any Tag plugin. That command is free to use.

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FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor

Inspiring

I would simply like to accept all suggestions of LR locations. I made 4.000 Pictures in Burma and I'm not willig to edit each picture 😞

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Henrik Eidem Kurka

Known Participant

Having many photos shot at several locations, I would like to change the country name on all of them. This is not possible in LR as if I change the country, the rest of the fields are gone. This clearly must be a bug?

The uncomitted fields can not be copied, not be saved, not be exported and not be accessed via the API.

johnrellis

Legend

Have you seen the clumsy workaround here: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom_improve_control_over_reverse_geocod...

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FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor

Inspiring

This is still a problem - immediately when editing one field in one of a group of photos all other geolocation metadata disappears - very annoying.

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