How to turn italicised place name suggestions into regular IPTC in a batch?

[Henrik2000]

Sorry, intense online search didn't bring a useful answer, so:

For image files with GPS data (like from a mobile phone), Lightroom Classic 13.01 on Win 10 shows IN ITALICS suggestions for sublocation, city, state, country.

I want to turn these city-names, states and countries eternally into regular IPTC. And I want to BATCH-SAVE the town-names, provinces and countries for 100s of files in one go. Ideally also make IPTC keywords out of the suggestions.

I only know how to turn one field (like Country) into permanent IPTC (also works for 2+ pics with IDENTICAL GPS data):

1. Select one or more pics in Grid view
2. Set Metadata panel to Location (maybe optional)
3. For 2+ pics, make sure on top of the Metadata panel it says Selected Photos (not Target Photo), if you want to change more than 1 pic
4. Click on field name "Country".
5. From the context menu, select a suggested country name – LR's best guess will be at the top and can be selected (screenshot 1 below).
6. That name will be added as regular IPTC – but the other suggestions for Sublocation, City and State are GONE, if you de-select and re-select the edited pic (screenshot 2 below).

A) Starting out:

B) Result (non-edited suggestions for other fields are gone):

This is tedious if you have many different locations and fields from Sublocation through City and State to Country and ISO Country Code in many pics.

So how can i turn all info into IPTC in one go? Actually I'd love all the place names ALSO added as IPTC keywords. Castles in the air?

I looked at Jeffrey Friedl's "Geoencoding Support" Plugin description (LINK), but it confused me no end. So far didn't install it. Does it help to change all location suggestions from Sublocation to Country for many pics in one go? Or is there another software doing it smoothly (Geosettr?)?

Thanks for all informed, usable suggestions!

PS - Aware from my studies that LR place name suggestions don't work well for some photographers in some territories and that one shouldn't snap with mobile phones anyway. Yet I am still very interested in a batch-solution as described above.

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

You can use a plug-in from John R. Ellis called AnyTag which will find all the un-committed location names, and allow you to commit them in bulk. This one part of the plug-in is free even after 30 days. The rest of the plugin requires payment for you to use after 30 days.

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

By the way, I use GeoSetter for all my GeoTagging, I don't do it in the LrC map module. And then the results from GeoSetter can be read into LrC (Metadata->Read Metadata from Files) and the italic place names don't happen. For this to work well, you should really turn on the LrC option to automatically write metadata to XMP; that way if you apply a preset at Import or edit the metadata or edit the photo before using GeoSetter, the results from GeoSetter will not overwrite the preset or other edits.

[Henrik2000]

DJ Paige, thanks for 2 posts with 2 different, both very helpful and detailed suggestions!

I tried Geosetter and indeed it does what I need – it even makes keywords out of place names, very good. (I only wish it would create bilingual keywords, for instance both "Austria" and "Österreich" in one go, but it creates only one of those 2 keywords, depending on preferences.)

Also Any Tag works as desired. It is nice to remain inside LR Classic with that Plug-in, even though it does not write keywords. The instructions and the command names could be more normal-user-friendly, even though they are still useful. One has to remember it creates a new collection that later can be deleted. Thanks for mentioning that this part of the plug-in remains free.

I have set my Lightroom so that any IPTC change is written straight into the individual file (JPG, DNG) and not only into the Lightroom database (so I activated "Metadata/Automatically write changes into XMP"). Even if Lightroom crashes or gets too expensive, IPTC will be there in each file  – this is what you recommend in your second post, right?

Also I use the LR option "Scan for Metadata Changes" for each re-import (after external changes to folders). But as you recommend, here in this case I could also use "Metadata – Read Metadata from File".

Thanks again for 2 most helpful suggestions!

[dj_paige]

I have set my Lightroom so that any IPTC change is written straight into the individual file (JPG, DNG) and not only into the Lightroom database (so I activated "Metadata/Automatically write changes into XMP"). Even if Lightroom crashes or gets too expensive, IPTC will be there in each file  – this is what you recommend in your second post, right?

I was not discussing backups, IPTC would only be a partial backup, and the proper way to make backups (which you may be doing) is to create automated and regular backups of the catalog file via the LrC built-in catalog backup feature.

If LrC gets to expensive and you end the subscription, the Library module still works, 100% of it, and so you still have access to all of your work (edits and metadata and other things as well). The Develop Module and Map Module will stop working if your subscription ends.

[Henrik2000]

DJ, thanks for the clarifications. I wasn't aware of LR Library still working in an unpaid version. You mean, i could still

• EDIT IPTC (keywords, place, headline etc.) or just 
• only VIEW IPTC, but not change anything?

[dj_paige]

DJ, thanks for the clarifications. I wasn't aware of LR Library still working in an unpaid version. You mean, i could still

• EDIT IPTC (keywords, place, headline etc.) or just 
• only VIEW IPTC, but not change anything?

By @Henrik2000

When your subscription ends, you can do anything in the Library Module that you can do now.

[Henrik2000]

Now i found that Geosetter writes identical location-names into a batch of pictures taken in different cities. I don't see how to avoid this.

While AnyTag effortlessly writes individual, correct location-names into a batch of pictures taken in different cities, so that each picture gets the proper location-names.

From that observation, AnyTag seems more useful, even if it doesn't create keywords.

[dj_paige]

Now i found that Geosetter writes identical location-names into a batch of pictures taken in different cities. I don't see how to avoid this.

By @Henrik2000

I have never seen this. It doesn't do that for me. You select a photo(s) and then you assign a geo-location by placing a pin on the map, and then clicking on the proper icon to assign the geo-location to the selected photo(s). I suppose if you select a photo that was taken in Cincinnati and also select another photo that was taken in Kazakhstan and you select them both and then follow the procedure I just stated in the previous sentence, then both photos will have the same geo-location and location names; this is user error, not GeoSetter error.

[Henrik2000]

Thanks. I had been talking about image files with GPS data inside (like from a mobile phone with appropriate settings).

In this case, Geosetter seems to take the location names for the first selected image and then apply those names to ALL selected images even if they were taken far away from the first image.

[Henrik2000]

PS. Now i found the way to turn differing GPS coordinates into differing place names with Geosetter.

While composing a long e-mail to the developer and while describing my steps, i found i had taken wrong steps - and if you follow another procedure (which i don't find intuitive though), you will indeed get the individually correct, differing place names for differing GPS coordinates.

So i didn't send the e-mail to the developer, but wrote down a long personal instruction for me with all the proper steps to avoid assigning identical place names to pictures from differing places.