P: Changed behaviour after any location field (state, country, city) is edited from automatic value

[Philipp26078945ag3p]

Issue: 

• Lightroom Classic Version Number: V15 and V14
  
• OS Version Number: Windows 10
  

Steps to reproduce:

1. import a Photo with GPS geo-location tags
   
2. the location fields (state, country, city, details) will be set automatically and shown greyed out
   
3. Edit and change e.g. the city
   
4. Navigate away from photo and come back (Added by Mod)

Expected result: 

the city shows the new value (not greyed out) and all other greyed out location fields stay with their old value derived from the GPS-coordinates.
Actual result: 
the city shows the new value (not greyed out) and all other  location fields have their old values removed/cleared.

This is annoying if you have to adapt a lot of locations (typically CITY) where the default is not suitable. In V13 it worked as expected. I have 80,000 geo-tagged aerials where this information is crucial.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

I am not able to replicate this issue using these instructions - moving back to discussions. 

"Actual result: 
the city shows the new value (not greyed out) and all other  location fields have their old values removed/cleared."

The other locations remain intact on my Win 10 system. (11.5)

[John R Ellis]

I'm not able to reproduce this either. Try resetting LR's preferences:
https://www.lightroomqueen.com/articles-page/how-do-i-reset-lightrooms-preferences/

LR sometimes soils its preferences file, and resetting it can fix all sorts of wonky behavior. That article explains how to restore the old preferences if resetting doesn't help.

If resetting preferences doesn't help, please do the menu command Help > System Info and copy/paste the first ten lines here, so we can see precisely which version you're running.  (There is no V15, V14, or V13.)

[Philipp26078945ag3p]

Sorry for beeing not exact a 4. step to reproduce is missing:

4. select a different photo and select the original photo again

Now the actual result will show, as described above.
In general it looks as if as soon as any location field holds a manual value the GPS-location will be ignored and the other fields will not be filled.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

This may be correct behavior. I've asked the team to verify As-designed behavior. 

[John R Ellis]

While waiting for this to be fixed, you can use the free Commit Locations command of the Any Tag plugin to "commit" the address fields (turning them from grey italic to white), allowing them to be edited freely. (The Commit Locations command also works around other bugs with consistent handling of address suggestions.)

[John R Ellis]

This misbehavior is clearly a bug, reintroducing a misbehavior in LR 11.0 that had been fixed in 7.5.

Prior to LR 7.5, if you edited a location field that had been filled in by automatic Address Lookup (grey, italicized), LR would clear all the other fields immediately. That design bug was fixed in LR 7.5 and worked correctly up through 10.4. But LR 11.0 re-introduced the bad behavior.

Putting aside the behavior from 7.5 through 10.4, there's no way this is as-designed. If you export the photo before changing any of the suggested location fields, the suggested fields will appear in the exported photo. But if you change City (and don't click away from the photo), the other suggested fields still appear in the Metadata panel, but if you export again, they won't appear in the exported photo. No product manager would accept responsibility for designing that inconsistent behavior.

Here's a complete recipe, testing in LR 11.5, 11.3, 11.0, and 10.4 / Mac OS 12.4. It works correctly in 10.4 but not 11.0 and later:

1. Import a photo with GPS coordinates but no location fields (City, State, Country, etc.). Wait for Address Lookup to fill in the location fields in the Metadata > Location panel with suggestions (grey italic). You may have to click away from the photo and click back to see them.

2. Export the photo to a JPEG with all metadata included. 

3. Examine the metadata of the exported photo with "exiftool -a -G -city -state -country" and observe the address suggestions appear in the metadata.

4. Change City to some other value. Observe that the other fields (State, Country) remain unchanged.

5. Repeat step 3 but observe that now just the new value for City appears in the exported metadata, while State and Country are blank. This inconsistency between what's displayed in the Metadata panel and the exported metadata would not be designed by any product manager.

6. Select some other photo and then selected the imported photo.  Observe that City and Country are now blank.  This incorrect behavior was introduced in LR 11.0 -- in LR 7.5 through 10.4, City and Country retain their grey italic suggested values.

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

the team is evaluating the behavior.