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Inspiring
May 27, 2012
Released

P: Improve control over reverse-geocoded Location metadata

  • May 27, 2012
  • 50 replies
  • 3222 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.

50 replies

Inspiring
June 23, 2025

@Rikk Flohr: Photography Does or will Adobe offer any solution to bulk commit suggested location data to the image meta data? I am still looking for a solution or at least a bug fix so that the AnyTag plugin works ...

johnrellis
Legend
August 23, 2018
Sigh, the bugs with suggested addresses and file renaming, Save Metadata To File, and plugin access to the fields still remain.  Unfortunately, the reports of these bugs were buried deep in this topic, and the engineers have a history of not reading these bug topics very carefully.  I've started a new bug report for the remaining bugs:

https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom-inconsistent-handling-of-suggested-...
Inspiring
August 23, 2018
If you want to use this in - for example - the filename when exporting, it will not work.
Participating Frequently
August 23, 2018
That has not been the case previously, but I will test on my next project and will be delighted if that occurs.  Thank you.
johnrellis
Legend
August 23, 2018
That's what I thought at first, but on reflection, I don't think there's any need to "accept" or "commit" the address suggestions. You can freely edit them, and they'll be exported just like manually added values.
Participating Frequently
August 23, 2018
Thank you - but it really needs an option to select one or more images and "accept all location suggestions".  As it is now, each location field in each image has to be manually accepted.
johnrellis
Legend
August 23, 2018
When LR makes an "address suggestion" of Sublocation, City, State/Province, and Country, they appear in grey font (and italics on Mac). Formerly, if you manually changed one of the fields, say City, then all the other fields would be erased. Now, you can manually change one of the fields, and the values in the other fields will be left untouched.
Participating Frequently
August 23, 2018
Hi.  I have read the New Features summary and cannot see any reference to this function.  Also I have updated to the latest version 7.5 and cannot identify any functional differences to GPS data handling for suggested location data.
Rikk Flohr_Photography
Community Manager
Community Manager
August 22, 2018
Lightroom Classic CC 7.5 was released today and should address this issue.  If you don’t see the update in your Creative Cloud App, hit the [Ctrl/Cmd]+ [Alt/Opt]+[R] to force a refresh. 

Give the new version a try and let us know if it solves the issue. 
Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org
johnrellis
Legend
June 24, 2018
This is a poorly designed part of LR. As a workaround, see the Commit Locations command of the Any Tag plugin.  That command is free to use.