How to reverse geocode in LR4 if image is already tagged with latitude/longitude

[Guest]

I've seen Terry White's video about geocoding by importing a .gpx file, but what if I've already got the latitude and longitude, and what I need is for Lightroom 4 to look up the city, state, country, etc.  Is this possible?

[kingstonimages]

Bump

RA5040ARD wrote:

This has to be a bug.

[cfransw]

To commit to several images at the same time in Map module you must have in" Library/Show Metadata for this photo only"   unchecked.

Frans

[cr697]

c.frans, I can't seem to find that option anywhere. Where is it please?

I have tried the uncheck option, quit, recheck. It worked for me for two pictures, even preserving the data I had in the IPTC Location fields (City and Country) and it added the missing ones (ISO country code, State/Province). But that worked only once. I'm no longer able to do that, even when I cut the GPS coordinates, uncheck the option again, quit, relaunch, recheck, paste GPS coordinates, and then nothing.

Chris

[CR Henderson]

Apparently reverse geoencoding only works if LR applies the original lat/long coordinants. The easiest way I've found to reverse geocode an image which when imported already has been geocoded is to note the physical position of the image on the map, highlight the image in the map by selecting its tag, press delete, drag the image from the filmstrip back to it's position in the map.  Reverse geocoding will then be applied if it is enabled.

This is one area where I think it would be a good thing if LR had a 'redo/refresh' button for reverse geoencoding.

[CR Henderson]

CR Henderson wrote:

Apparently reverse geoencoding only works if LR applies the original lat/long coordinants. The easiest way I've found to reverse geocode an image which when imported already has been geocoded is to note the physical position of the image on the map, highlight the image in the map by selecting its tag, press delete, drag the image from the filmstrip back to it's position in the map.  Reverse geocoding will then be applied if it is enabled.

This is one area where I think it would be a good thing if LR had a 'redo/refresh' button for reverse geoencoding.

I've found a second sequence that also works. 

1. Select the image in the film strip, click on the GPS coordinates field in the Time and Place section. 
2. When the GPS coords are highlighted type Command-X (Mac) <Cntrl-X (Win)?>. 
3. Press enter to exit the field. 
4. Click on the now blank field. 
5. Type Command-V (Mac) <Cntrl-V (Win)?>.
6. Press enter. 

This works on my iMac, I haven't tested it in Windows.

[Sean McCormack]

cr697, that option is in the Library Module, not in Map, which is probably why tou can't find it. It's the the Metadata menu as 'Show Metadata for Target Photo only'

[cr697]

Thank you Sean. I had looked there but did not find it at first. Actually, it was unticked, which means that tagging should have worked for multiple photos. It is a bit akward an option that applies to one module is only visible in another one.

And the two I did tag yesterday, wel I seem to have the commit problem mentioned earlier. They did not contain the data anymore today, even though my Location filtering column have them. For me it is easy to check as I use Lightroom in English and had these new data in English, but I had encoded my country and city names so far in French. The data stood out, and selecting it, it properly displayed the picture. This is bizarre as checking the metadata, it was empty. I cut and paste once more the GPMS coordinates, and the data showed gretyed out briefly again.

And CR Henderson, I tried your steps as well, and it didn't work (Mac as well).

From a workflow perspective, I would like this commit as a button, or that data is added in non-greyed out mode. I understand the italics and/ or this greyed out mode is useful to differentiate between data added by hand and that added automatically though, which might have its benefits.

Chris

[RA5040ARD]

Guys,

Honestly ... this is a bug in Lightroom.  There is no reason on earth why the geo-encoding should not work irrespective of how the gps data is put in (unless the connection to Google is down perhaps).  However, as I mentioned in an earlier post, if there is ANY data in the location fields, Lightroom will not fill in any of the fields (which is also a bug - or an unfortunate 'feature' as there should be an option to fill in all the fields or only the ones not already filled in).

At any rate, there is simple and very effective solution - which is also very cheap - and that is to use Jeffrey Friendl's gps plug-in.  Of course this doesn't mean that Adobe should not fix this problem ... but at least it gives us a good way around the problem in the short term (and quite possibly a better one than Adobe are likely to implement even in the longer term).

The way to use the plug-in is to get the gps data in to the images by whatever means you wish (track-log, external app, move image to map in Lightroom, type it in manually ....) and then run the Friedl plugin.  All of the fields will be populated ... and if you do not want to overwrite already populated fields then there is an option for that.

[dj_paige]

Honestly ... this is a bug in Lightroom.  There is no reason on earth why the geo-encoding should not work irrespective of how the gps data is put in (unless the connection to Google is down perhaps).  However, as I mentioned in an earlier post, if there is ANY data in the location fields, Lightroom will not fill in any of the fields (which is also a bug - or an unfortunate 'feature' as there should be an option to fill in all the fields or only the ones not already filled in).

I guess having to "committ" the changes to Lightroom, one-by-one, means that this "bug" or "feature" makes the Library Module virtually unusable. I will go back to GeoSetter for geotagging.

Bad job here, Adobe.

[helen_gossweiler]

dj_paige wrote:

I guess having to "committ" the changes to Lightroom, one-by-one, means that this "bug" or "feature" makes the Library Module virtually unusable. I will go back to GeoSetter for geotagging.

Bad job here, Adobe.

Please note that the reverse geoencoding (without committing the data) also takes place during export, whereby the location fields are written into the "proper" IPTC fields of the exported images if wanted.

Beat

[dj_paige]

Please note that the reverse geoencoding (without committing the data) also takes place during export, whereby the location fields are written into the "proper" IPTC fields of the exported images if wanted.

Beat

Basically, what you (and others) are saying is that the reverse geoencoding (without committing the data) is used by some parts of LR4, and not by other parts. What sense does that make?

[helen_gossweiler]

dj_paige wrote:

Basically, what you (and others) are saying is that the reverse geoencoding (without committing the data) is used by some parts of LR4, and not by other parts. What sense does that make?

It doesn't make sense (and can be called a bug IMHO).

Beat

[dj_paige]

Where is the proper place to report suspected bugs?

[helen_gossweiler]

dj_paige wrote:

Where is the proper place to report suspected bugs?

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family

[Henrik Eidem Kurka]

Weird - I reported it there yesterday but today I can't find it.

[RA5040ARD]

Not writing the location to the xmp files IS a Lightroom bug - what else could it be?  Export works OK, edit in Photoshop does not, export to xmp does not.

By far the best workaround until Adobe fix this is to use Jeffrey Friedl's geo-encoding plug-in.  It works extremely well (the reverse lookup is better than Lightroom's), is very simple to use, is fast ... and works.

I note that dj-paige is proposing to to back to GeoSetter (which I used with Lightroom 3).  However with Lightroom's map support Jeffrey Friedl's plug-in is way easier to use as everything can be done from within Lightroom.  All the other bits work fine in Lightroom (like loading a track-log, assigning the GPS coordinates manually, moving an image onto the map etc).  What doesn't work fully is the reverse lookup ... and Friedl's plug-in does that brilliantly.  The cost is as little as 1c as this is donationware.

I know I've plugged this plug-in several times ... so just in case anyone thinks I have a vested interest in this, I have no association whatsoever with Jeffrey Friedl.  Having said that, he has some really nice plug-ins like the Metadata Wrangler and I would like to see him getting as much support as possible so that he continues to develop his plugins.

[dancedar]

Agreed, this is ridiculous. Being able to batch do X but not apply/save change en-mass is like being able to select 100 images and copy them in Windows but only being able to paste one at a time.

I know this is an RC but it's marketed as a pro tool...this needs a pro feature completing otherwise it's near useless.

Even clicking the field label to commit with mixed values should show <Mixed> and selecting <mixed> should apply the appropriate values.

Please, Adobe, surely this is a simple fix?

I've just have to restore about 15k photos from a backup due to realising I've attempted to get LR to reverse-goecode all my images after removing the old, manually-entered info. It seems with every version and tool Adobe introduce into Lightroom I'm taking a step forward then having to undo this manually and avoid using it.

[markhilbush]

I have to agree here.  I can understand the limitation being in the original 4.0 release -- you need to draw the line somewhere on features.  But, come on Adobe, we are up to 4.3 RC and this is still not working the way it should.  I've been waiting patiently for some improvements here.  However, I now have thousands of images that have uncommitted location values.  It can't be that difficult to implement something here. 

At least provide a way in the API to retrieve and commit the uncommitted metadata.  Someone could easily write a plugin to take care of this.

[humulu]

I am experiencing the same issue. For more details see this post to report problems. If you agree this should be fixed then please respond to that post and indicate that you are having the same issue. Maybe it will get noticed by Adobe.

http://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/geotagging_and_committing?rfm=1

[Henrik Eidem Kurka]

I tried yesterday to migrate an old test-catalog from LR 3 to LR 4 and all photos that already had GPS info (both iPhone-phoots already tagged from phone and photos tagged with an external program) did get the location fields filled in. Though grey, but it does not matter, because when I use the library filter to browse the locations, it used the location names automatically retrieved by the reverse geotagging.

So basically: I did nothing. It just worked. When I put an image on the map it also got the location fields.

However when I tried this on my main library (also converted from LR 3) the day before it did not work. Will try that again in case the whole problem was due to some glitch between LR and Google.

[RA5040ARD]

I also updated my LR3 catalog to LR4 and the images which have gps data but no location information did not get the location data filled in. Fortunately the jFriedl plug-in fixes that quite easily.

[Henrik Eidem Kurka]

I tried again now with my main catalog, but it still does not work 😞 

[Henrik Eidem Kurka]

Created a new catalog on the same computer and imported some photos with GPS and they showed up with location info. Back to my main catalog, the same photos show no GPS. Adobe - please help!