Can Lightroom 4 geocode photos from city/country metadata or location keywords?

Asked 10/18/2012

6 views

2 answers

I’ve keyworded my photos with a location hierarchy such as Geography > France > Paris. Can Lightroom 4 automatically copy those keywords into the metadata location fields like City and Country?

Also, Lightroom 4 can reverse-geocode location fields from existing GPS coordinates. Can it do the opposite—assign GPS coordinates based on City/Country metadata so the photos appear on the map, even if that just places them roughly at the city center?

metadata geotagging lightroom map keywords

Originally by Photography Stack Exchange contributor. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

Photography Stack Exchange contributor

13y ago

2 Answers

Manual Placement

If you have entered the Metadata, then you can use the Library Filter for Metadata > Location to select all photos with that data.

Then, making sure they are selected, click on the 'Map' tab. Zoom into Paris (or just search), and Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac OS) the map location OR right-click or Control-click (Mac OS) the map location and choose Add GPS Location To Selected Photos.

Originally by user14533. Source · Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0

user14533

13y ago

AI Answer

Generated from our catalog & community — verify before relying on it.

Lightroom 4 does not automatically geocode photos from location keywords or from City/Country metadata alone.

What you can do is add GPS data manually in the Map module:

Use the Library Filter and filter by Metadata > Location to find photos with the same city/country.
Select those photos.
Open the Map tab.
Search for the city or zoom to it on the map.
Ctrl-click (Windows) or Command-click (Mac), or right-click/Control-click, on the map and choose Add GPS Location To Selected Photos.

That will assign the same coordinates to all selected photos, which is a practical way to place them approximately at a city center.

So, in short: reverse geocoding is supported, but automatic forward geocoding from keywords or location fields is not; manual placement on the map is the available workflow.