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K
keithg12496682
Inspiring
February 26, 2017
Question

Incomplete search results on "Places" Elements 15

  • February 26, 2017
  • 3 replies
  • 644 views

I am just testing a new installation of Elements 15 with some sample data before importing my entire photo collection and finding some very confusing search results on "Places".

So, I am fairly sure correct places have been picked up from the metadata ( gps from iPhone pics ) as it appears on the google map and I can see for example a group of 70 or so photos sitting over Germany.

Problem is when I go to the search function where people/smarttags/places etc etc and just open the window on places there is only 1 photo appearing under Germany  and that was likely to be one I added manually because it came from a camera without gps.

Strangely though there many examples where the gps data seems to have been used correctly.

I don't want to waste a lot of time with this software if glitches like this are evident so any help would be appreciated.

Thanks

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    3 replies

    tempuseristemp
    tempuseristemp
    Known Participant
    February 28, 2017

    Yeah search is quite broken.  I had a similar problem when I searched for Hawaii.  1/3 of my photos had keyword Hawaii, 1/3 of my photos had place set as Hawaii, and 1/3 had smart tag info set as Hawaii. 

    When I typed Hawaii in search, auto-complete showed Hawaii 3 times with different icons.  One for keyword, event, and place.  Depending on which metadata I was searching on I got 1/3 of the photos.  I had to search 3 times using different meta data fields to retrieve all Hawaii photos for me.

    I realized whey the "apply location" was running slow.  Adobe Elements was making 1500 network request to maps.google.com's geo-location api for 1500 photos.   This ended up taking about 15min.  If they batched up the lookup in one request they could have done the look up in 1 or 2 seconds...

    K
    keithg12496682Author
    Inspiring
    February 28, 2017

    Thanks again for the response.

    I've now just noticed that if I take one of the photos that was originally "pinned" to a place ( presumably via the gps metadata ) and edit it by manually placing it somewhere else it now appears in the "Search" window so there's definitely something wrong with the "search" functionality not picking up the original location.

    You mention a setting "apply location" - can you let me know what this is and is there anyway of refreshing the location data held in the catalogue.

    Its also rather disturbing to think this "place" lookup is going on dynamically ( if indeed it is ) as this will be slow. I had naively thought this process would be a one off when photos were imported into the catalogue and place names would be held on the Elements database.

    ***************************** Update ******************************************

    After some further testing I think I know whats going on.

    Whilst the map view looks as though photos are pinned to a location ( so in my example many on Munich ) which doesn't give option to "get location" when you zoom in very close invidual stacks of photos do show the "get location" option.

    As soon as you manually do this and the database is updated they also appear in the "search" function.

    The question is why didn't the system "apply a location" in the first place since the gps data was available

    **********************Further update *******************************************

    Further investigation reveals the real problem - see below cut straight from the Adobe help website

    "Get location name for photographs with GPS information                                            

                            

    If your media files include GPS information, they are displayed on the map but don't have place names associated with them.

    To associate a place name with these files, hover over the stack and click the Get Location button"

    I also see this now featured in other posts

    What's the point in having GPS data and NOT being able to assign a location name automatically - it's completely useless !!

    There's no way I can go through thousands of photos on a map and have to manually click on "get location name"

    Very disappointing !!

    S
    Community Manager
    SurendraPalCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    March 1, 2017

    Hi Keith,

    I have sent you an email. Please respond.

    Hi Jo,

    On the thread which you initiated for your problem, my colleague has replied on it. Please try the workaround mentioned by her and update if your issue still persist on same thread. Thread is: Search fragmentation

    Please let me know if I am missing something.

    ~Surendra

    tempuseristemp
    tempuseristemp
    Known Participant
    February 28, 2017

    One other thing, when I try to apply location info it's pretty slow.  Took a solid 15+minutes to process 1500 photos from Tokyo using a 12cores, 64GB ram machine with 100Mbps network.  Would be nice if this was a bit more optimized. 

    K
    keithg12496682Author
    Inspiring
    February 28, 2017

    Thanks for the reply.

    Yes, I agree it is quite slow but I don't think that's the problem because the place name's appear to have been added as I can see them in map view.

    The problem is with the "Search" view where you can use multiple criteria ( Places,people etc etc )

    In this view if you start searching on Places a set of results appear sorted by Country first and it's incomplete.

    The example above shows only 1 photo in the whole of Germany where the map view has many.

    This really renders the "Search" process useless which should be one of the most important features of the Organiser module.

    S
    Community Manager
    SurendraPalCommunity Manager
    Community Manager
    February 27, 2017

    Hi Keith,

    The issue might be: the images that are shown over Germany may have only GPS and not the place tag. To correct this problem, go to places pinned view, hover on the Germany stack and on top left there will be an option saying 'Get location name'. On doing so, the places stack will be named for Germany. Now try searching via Places panel in Search and let me know if you still face any issues.

    ~Surendra

    K
    keithg12496682Author
    Inspiring
    February 27, 2017

    Many thanks for the reply.

    I've checked as you describe and when hovering over the stack in "Places" map view they show as 41 photos with a full placename of Munich,Bavaria,Germany which absolutely correct.

    In the "Search" function though ( which appears to be pre sorted by country ) there is still only 1 photo under Germany.

    I also think the photos under each country in this view looks incomplete for other countries i.e. France shows only 34 photos and there must be way more than that.

    It just looks as though the gps data has been interpreted correct when constructing the main catalogue but doen't carry through to the "Search" function which is obviously a big problem.

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