Lightroom export to JPG - GPS Coordinates but no Country, City, Region, ...

[eastfrisian1]

hey guys

i have a little problem with my lightroom cc. eventually i could be the problem too, but let's see.

i would like to export my full gps data as seen in lightroom with the metadata in the filename.

for example: i made a picture in my hometown. so i have the gps coordinates on the lightroom map, and the iptc data in die metadata of the file. in the iptc fields are informations like "city", "country", "iso-country"; and so on. all of these fields are filled automatically from lightroom. but the text is grey.

so the file would be named as "Germany - hometown - 3929.jpg".

i thought. but it isn't.

if i export one of these files, the grey text will not be exportet. but the gps coordinates will.  i have to right click these fields and confirm these data, to export it. otherwise the fields are empty, and the filename is "  3929.jpg"

but i have to do this in every single file. why?! do i have to confirm 4 fields in every of my 10.000 files?! this would be a horror.

i hope for any tips from you

best regards

[dj_paige · Accepted solution]

I never liked this aspect of the way the Lightroom uses the GPS metadata, I don't want to confirm 4 fields on every image. I believe you can do it in bulk by selecting multiple photos and then confirming them all at once, but I *think* that they all have to be at the same GPS location for this to work.

I no longer use Lightroom to add GPS coordinates and metadata for this reason. I add the GPS coordinates and metadata via the freeware program GeoSetter, and then once GeoSetter has added the information to the photo file (or sidecar .xmp files), I launch Lightroom and select the desired photos and then Metadata->Read Metadata from Files. This avoids the problem you have mentioned.

[eastfrisian1]

yes, bulk mode is possible. but as you say - every image would become the same data, which is not really a good option.

i think i will have a look on the tool GeoSetter. Thanks for this advice!

[johnrellis]

If i export one of these files, the grey text will not be exported, but the gps coordinates will.  I have to right click these fields and confirm these data, to export it. otherwise the fields are empty, and the filename is "  3929.jpg"

Hmm, normally LR will export such "uncommitted"  location fields (unreadable dark grey on Mac, light grey italic on Windows). However, by design uncommitted fields indeed can't be used in file renaming templates.

If you're on the latest version of LR, and you're not able to export uncommitted locations, please do Help > System Info and report your exact version of LR.   If this is a bug (that is, LR isn't operating as designed), it would be good to get a reproducible test case and report it.

As dj_paige alluded, LR's handling of reverse geocoding is a braindead design, so bad that Adobe has never bothered to justify it. Please add your me-too vote and detailed opinion to this topic in the official Adobe feedback forum: Lightroom: improve control over reverse-geocoded Location metadata | Photoshop Family Customer Commu... .  Unlike this forum, a user-to-user forum, Adobe product developers do read every post in that forum, and the feedback often does influence Adobe.

A couple of workarounds: 1. I too use Geosetter (in a Windows virtual machine on my Mac).  2. The Any Tag plugin has a free command that will commit the locations of multiple photos at once.

[johnrellis]

I forgot to mention another workaround: 3. The Geoencoding Support plugin. I have little experience with the plugin, but in general the author's plugins have excellent reputations.

[dj_paige]

I was not aware of this plug-in, I will probably give it a try in a day or two.

I agree that the author of this plug-in has an outstanding reputation for quality plug-ins (and probably other things).