How practical to "down-migrate" to LR 8?

[PhilBurton]

Lightroom Version Number

Classic 9.1

Operating System

1. Windows 10

Lightroom 9 broke a plug-in that I really like, Jeffrey's "Geoencoding Support" Plugin for Lightroom. The author has tried to fix the issue, but so far LR 9 breaks this plug-in. (If anyone is using this plug-in successfully with LR 9, please raise your hand.)

What would be involved in a "down migration" to LR 8. Is there any way to preserve my current .lrcat file? If not, what would I have to do? I migrated to LR 9 when it first came out, last October. Since then I imported maybe 1000 photos, done lots of editing, created collections, new or modified smart collections, did a major slideshow, new import presets, etc. Or should I just fergeddaboudid, as they say in my hometown of New York City.

I do have backups going back to before the Lightroom upgrade.

Phil Burton

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Honestly... I wouldn’t. Reverting after a few days is fine, but a few months is a nightmare.

You’d have to write all of your recent edits to xmp, revert to a previous, reimport all newly imported photos, try to figure out which older photos you edited in order to read in the xmp, and manually rebuild anything that can’t be written to xmp like collections and virtual copies.

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

Do you have another computer? If this sounds painful ignore it but since I suspect the geo-encoding is done once, maybe put 8.x on another computer, ingest and tag the photos with the plugin, write XMP and/or export a catalog and then import to your real computer with 9.1. That presumes it's the plugin and not the metadata it writes that is the issue of course.

And a real pain and not a real solution -- just trying to find something better than regressing.

 

[Califdan]

I use many of Jeffrey's plug ins, but don't happen to use that one. You didn't specify what you do with it other than use it probably in place of the weak tools in the Map Module. Way prior to knowing about Jeffrey's plug in I started using something called GeoSetter and find it quite useful. If you let me know how you use Geffrey's plug in, I can tell you if Geosetter can do the same. Geosetter does not run as a plugin though. I use it just before I import the images with a tracklog file.

 

[PhilBurton]

I use many of Jeffrey's plug ins, but don't happen to use that one. You didn't specify what you do with it other than use it probably in place of the weak tools in the Map Module. Way prior to knowing about Jeffrey's plug in I started using something called GeoSetter and find it quite useful. If you let me know how you use Geffrey's plug in, I can tell you if Geosetter can do the same. Geosetter does not run as a plugin though. I use it just before I import the images with a tracklog file.

Dan,

Jeffrey's plug-in can supply street addresses as "sublocation," which Lightroom's MAP modules does not. For a lot of my photography, that is important. As far as I know, from reading web posts, GeoSetter also does not supply street addresses.

Phil

 

[PhilBurton]

Honestly... I wouldn’t. Reverting after a few days is fine, but a few months is a nightmare.

You’d have to write all of your recent edits to xmp, revert to a previous, reimport all newly imported photos, try to figure out which older photos you edited in order to read in the xmp, and manually rebuild anything that can’t be written to xmp like collections and virtual copies.

Ok, glad I asked. That would be a LOT of work, and sounds very prone to errors.

I was hoping that there was some kind of "magic" database converter.

Phil

 

[PhilBurton]

Do you have another computer? If this sounds painful ignore it but since I suspect the geo-encoding is done once, maybe put 8.x on another computer, ingest and tag the photos with the plugin, write XMP and/or export a catalog and then import to your real computer with 9.1. That presumes it's the plugin and not the metadata it writes that is the issue of course.

And a real pain and not a real solution -- just trying to find something better than regressing.

Ferguson,

Yes, I have a laptop, which I'm not using much these days because I'm not traveling right now. How would that approach work for photos already in my 9.1 catalog?

Phil

 

[Califdan]

GeoSetter also does not supply street addresses.

As far as I know, that is correct. It only goes down to neighborhood.

 

[sty2586]

You Need a private api Code for Google Maps in this Plug in. look in the history of this plug in on Friedl’s homepage.
Google for “private api code for google maps” you will get information how to get it.
It is complicated (at least for me, I’m austrian), but I did it.
It’s not free of charge, but you get $200/month free. This is enough for appr. 20000 geoencodings.
Greetings from Vienna
Franz

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

Yes, I have a laptop, which I'm not using much these days because I'm not traveling right now. How would that approach work for photos already in my 9.1 catalog?

My suggestion was aimed at new photos you are ingesting now -- ingest on the downlevel PC, encoded, then move to the new computer (with the geocoding) for processing.

To do old ones, with just LR, it's kind of like the downgrade issue, so not something I'd recommend.

How about this -- move all the images to the downlevel PC, code them. Then are there any other LR plugin tools that might allow you to do this, some of the LR Transporter tools, etc. Something you could export metadata from one system and import just that specific part of the metadata into another?

 

[PhilBurton]

You Need a private api Code for Google Maps in this Plug in. look in the history of this plug in on Friedl’s homepage.
Google for “private api code for google maps” you will get information how to get it.
It is complicated (at least for me, I’m austrian), but I did it.
It’s not free of charge, but you get $200/month free. This is enough for appr. 20000 geoencodings.
Greetings from Vienna
Franz

Franz,

I already have that private API code. I have to say that I could barely decipher Google's instructions. When I entered that key into Jeffrey's plug-in, a message said that my code was good only for "reverse geo-encoding," and not for the other two functions. That's OK for now, but I would like to get a key that works for all three functions. Even Jeffrey, a software developer who wrote the O'Reilly book on regular expressions, was stymied.

(The egregiously-complex steps needed to create the Google API key are beyond my ability to explain as of yet, sorry.)

Whenever I try to use this plug-in I get this message:

Victoria: should I start a new thread about my problem with this plug-in?

 

[PhilBurton]

My suggestion was aimed at new photos you are ingesting now -- ingest on the downlevel PC, encoded, then move to the new computer (with the geocoding) for processing.

To do old ones, with just LR, it's kind of like the downgrade issue, so not something I'd recommend.

How about this -- move all the images to the downlevel PC, code them. Then are there any other LR plugin tools that might allow you to do this, some of the LR Transporter tools, etc. Something you could export metadata from one system and import just that specific part of the metadata into another?

Ferguson,

I think your idea is brilliant, and I will definitely use it for all new images before I import them into my "production" catalog. Ingest MOVE from my "_default import" folder into LR 8 to folders based on year-month-date, and then ingest ADD into LR 8.

For existing photos, I think I will have to play with John Beardsworth's Listview and maybe his SearchReplaceTransfer plug-ins. I'm not sure how soon I can get to this "project," but it's worth a try.

A potential problem, maybe, is that I don't know if the Adobe license servers will accept this two-release arrangement.

Phil Burton

 

[PhilBurton]

Ferguson,

I think your idea is brilliant, and I will definitely use it for all new images before I import them into my "production" catalog. Ingest MOVE from my "_default import" folder into LR 8 to folders based on year-month-date, and then ingest ADD into LR 8.

I just realized that I should EXPORT as CATALOG all the images that I process in Lightroom 8, and then IMPORT that in my Lightroom 9 catalog.

 

[sty2586]

Franz,

I already have that private API code. I have to say that I could barely decipher Google's instructions. When I entered that key into Jeffrey's plug-in, a message said that my code was good only for "reverse geo-encoding," and not for the other two functions. That's OK for now, but I would like to get a key that works for all three functions. Even Jeffrey, a software developer who wrote the O'Reilly book on regular expressions, was stymied.

(The egregiously-complex steps needed to create the Google API key are beyond my ability to explain as of yet, sorry.)

Whenever I try to use this plug-in I get this message:

View attachment 13736

Victoria: should I start a new thread about my problem with this plug-in?

I use it only for reverse Geoencoding. Therefore I never got your error message,
Sorry
Franz

 

[PhilBurton]

Ferguson,

I think your idea is brilliant, and I will definitely use it for all new images before I import them into my "production" catalog. Ingest MOVE from my "_default import" folder into LR 8 to folders based on year-month-date, and then ingest ADD into LR 8.

I just realized that I should EXPORT as CATALOG all the images that I process in Lightroom 8, and then IMPORT that catalog in my Lightroom 9 catalog.

 

[PhilBurton]

I use it only for reverse Geoencoding. Therefore I never got your error message,
Sorry
Franz

Franz,

I also want to use this plug-in for reverse geoencoding. But as soon as I start this module in Plug-in Extras, before I actually use the module, I get the error message that I included in message #11 of this thread. Sometimes that error message also has a "JF" logo, so I'm assuming it comes from the plug-in module, not the main part of Lightroom.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Victoria: should I start a new thread about my problem with this plug-in?

You'd have more success contacting Jeffrey TBH.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Have you got the latest? Looks like Jeffrey's heard of the message:

20191204.337
A blind change that might help get around a mysterious Lightroom "CryptUnprotectData" error that some Windows users see. I'm not sure what part of the plugin might be related to that error, but taking an educated guess, and if correct, trying to at least mitigate the effects of the bug.

 

[Victoria Bampton]

Years ago, I remember seeing a cryptunprotectdata error with a publish services plug-in or two. Could be worth trying the solutions for that too. Errors using Publish Services in Lightroom

 

[sty2586]

Phil

Did you try to use Open Street Map ?
On my LR 9.1. both methods are working (Just checked).
Generate a new API key, I got mine after the 3rd trial and I didn't know why. So no help from my side, sorry.
There are a lot of possibilities to choose the wrong selection.
Franz

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

As to old images -- the simple solution may be to wait for a few days/weeks/months until this all gets sorted, assuming you can wait. Conversely if it doesn't get sorted you will want a new tool anyway.

 

[PhilBurton]

Phil

Did you try to use Open Street Map ?
On my LR 9.1. both methods are working (Just checked).
Generate a new API key, I got mine after the 3rd trial and I didn't know why. So no help from my side, sorry.
There are a lot of possibilities to choose the wrong selection.
Franz

I guess I will try to generate a new Google API key.

I didn't see a way to get the plug-in to use OpenStreetMap. Can you post a screenshot.

Thanks,

Phil

 

[PhilBurton]

As to old images -- the simple solution may be to wait for a few days/weeks/months until this all gets sorted, assuming you can wait. Conversely if it doesn't get sorted you will want a new tool anyway.

I think I have no real choice, but to wait.

 

[PhilBurton]

Years ago, I remember seeing a cryptunprotectdata error with a publish services plug-in or two. Could be worth trying the solutions for that too. Errors using Publish Services in Lightroom

Thanks. I'll give it a try and post back.

Phil

 

[sty2586]

Phil
Screenshot