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FeedbackCommunityMember
Inspiring
May 27, 2012
Released

P: Improve control over reverse-geocoded Location metadata

  • May 27, 2012
  • 50 replies
  • 3223 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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    FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor
    Inspiring
    September 21, 2013
    Thanks Rob - I just tested it and it seems to work fine. I would appreciate if Adobe could fix LR, but meanwhile I'll use the plugin from Jeffrey Friedl.
    areohbee
    areohbee
    Legend
    September 19, 2013
    I don't know much about this stuff, so please forgive if I'm not even close, but maybe

    http://regex.info/blog/2008-10-29/979

    would help

    ?
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor
    Inspiring
    September 17, 2013
    I would say this is more or less a must
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor
    Inspiring
    March 11, 2013
    Write Reverse Geocoding suggestions into xmp + make permanent easily

    As mentioned, Lightroom only exports reverse geocoding suggestions if the option is checked in the catalog settings.
    I can see no reason why LR does not also write them out into the image file or its xmp sidecar when "Save Metadata to File" is chosen. At least it should be an option.

    It does write this data, if it was made permanent fist by clicking on the filed titles ("Sublocation", "City" etc.) and then selecting the first entry in the appearing pop-up. But this can be a tedious process if it needs to be done to multiple images with different location data ( appears in the fields).

    There should be a button "Make Reverse Geocoding suggestions permanent" as others requested.

    Lastly, there is some weird behavior with the ISO Country Code field. If it was once filled out manually, then gets deleted and the image is either exported or metadata is saved to the file, the old ISO Country Code value will still be there (can be seen in Photo Mechanic).
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor
    Inspiring
    October 31, 2012
    After reverse-geocoding 15,000 photos from their gps data I've all their location field's filled. BUT they cannot be saved/committed unless I do each specific location by manually selecting it. Does anyone - Adobe, even - know how to commit greyed/italic/uncommitted location data en-mass? I seriously can't believe you can automate this aspect but cannot automate the committing of the data!

    F
    FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor
    Inspiring
    October 31, 2012
    In LR4 it is possible to have reverse geocoded address information suggested for locations.

    However to save these suggestions a click on each respective suggestion for country, country code, city and state is needed.

    Please add an option to always accept these suggestions. My workflow should be: Click on image, click on location on map. Done.

    Right now it is: click on image, click on location on map, click on country code, choose suggestion, click on city, choose suggestion, click on state, choose suggestion, click on country, choose suggestion. Done.

    If there are more than one suggestions the first match could be chosen and only *after* it has been automatically applied I could change it by clicking on the respective metadata label and choose another suggestion or manually edit it.

    See this post for my initial question: http://forums.adobe.com/message/43218...

    johnrellis
    johnrellis
    Legend
    May 28, 2012
    To get rid of the ISO country code: Click on one or more of the location labels except "ISO Country Code" to commit them. Then select another photo, then select this photo again -- you'll see that ISO Country Code no longer contains an uncommitted (italicized) value.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor
    Inspiring
    May 28, 2012
    Thanks for the workaround; not perfect but that will do.

    Minor problem still persisting: no way to get rid of the auto-filled ISO country code though.
    johnrellis
    johnrellis
    Legend
    May 27, 2012
    Similar complaints:

    http://feedback.photoshop.com/photosh...

    As a clumsy workaround, you can first “commit” the italicized location fields by clicking on their label (e.g. click on “Country”). This records them permanently in the metadata, and you can then edit them without fear of them disappearing on you.

    Interestingly, if you don’t have an active filter on a location field, then the italicized location fields aren’t cleared as you edit them until you select another image.
    F
    FeedbackCommunityMemberAuthor
    Inspiring
    May 27, 2012
    E.g. :

    took a few shots of the beautiful Earth during a flight. Knowing the GPS coordinates, I enter them in the GPS field.

    Reverse-geocoding now informs me (in hard-to-read gray italics) that I was flying over Country:"Estonia" Province:"Pärnu County" (ahem, Estonians don't use the word 'county') City:"Vändra vald", Sublocation: (blank).

    Let's edit 'Pärnu county' to 'Pärnu maakond' or simply 'Pärnu'. I click in the metadata field, oh wait, can't edit the value, it disappeared! Alrighty, let's type it by hand then. Speak of a time-saving feature. OK, 'Pärnu', validate with Enter...

    » Oh no, my photo now has the right State/Province as I entered it, but no known country or city anymore...

    Have to find the photo again in the library (damn' filters) then clean my hand-entered State/Province value so that reverse-geocoded fields get filled again. Alas, I'll have to live with this ugly 'Pärnu County' that I can't change without messing all the rest.

    Now, the 'Sublocation' field was left empty by Adobe's dumb geocoding feature; let's type something in there: "onboard a Boeing 747" and validate.

    » Oh no, my photo now has a clever Sublocation info, but City, State/Province and Country are blank !

    Hey Adobe, want to drive your customers nuts ? 😉
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