Keywords vs IPTC location metadata

[stevedo]

Lightroom Version Number

Lightroom Classic 10.1

Operating System

1. Windows 10

Hi all, I'm a little confused. Over a number of years I have created a hierarchy of keywords which capture the place a photo was taken.

For example:
South America -> Colombia -> Bogota -> Gold Museum
Europe -> United Kingdom -> England -> Oxfordshire - > Goring on Thames -> "1st line of my address here"
North America -> USA -> California -> Los Angeles -> Getty Museum

Recently I watched a YT video by Peter Krogh which talked about IPTC location data. This got me thinking as to whether it is worthwhile adding IPTC location metadata to my photos. Some of my photos have GPS data, either using a tracklog from my GPS to apply the coordinates in Lightroom, or directly from camera, in this case a GoPro I use on my motorcycle. I noticed that this GPS data is "resolved" to IPTC location fields. For example State/Province, Country and ISO Country code are recorded automatically. This is useful where the photo was taken in the middle of nowhere and there is no town or museum etc to capture as a keyword. I still add a keyword for country as a minimum.

The challenge then is I have location metadata stored in two places i.e. my keyword hierarchy and in IPTC location metadata which I can't seem to find a way of combining. In my head I've gone round this a number of times and have confused myself. Is there any benefit to one method of storing location metadata over the other? I am a hobbyist and do not send photos to stock agencies etc. which as I understand would use the IPTC metadata.

Any insights would be extremely useful. Thanks
Steve

 

[Califdan]

I tend to store both. However I use an external Exif based tool to GEO tag my images using TrackLog files before I import them into LR. I have that tool set to fill in the IPTC location fields automatically and many times I also use this tool to supply some rough keywords (which I merge into my LR Keyword hierarchy after import). So the process is a lot less cumbersome than LR's Map module auto-tag feature with address lookup (which only "suggests" IPTC values (they show in italics) and you have to click each one to lock it in).

However, in my experience I rarely use the IPTC stored values in my personal use of Lightroom and pretty much always revert to using Keywords for filtering, searching or other purposes. While the IPTC fields can be used in filters and smart collections many times you need to use the "all searchable metadata" option which is a pretty big tent resulting in many false positives (e.g. same words are in title or caption on a non relevant image).

So, why do I bother with IPTC location data you may ask? Well, I do post images on social media sites, photo sharing sites, and stock images sites and even though those images have the same location oriented keywords as are in IPTC, it is possible that some such sites use the IPTC information either in place of the keywords or as a stronger match than keywords so I just want to cover my bases.

Bottom line, if you don't care about outside of LR searching, then not much value in the IPTC location fields.

 

[Paul_DS256]

As CalifDan says, if your searches in LR work now for finding pictures by location, the no need to change.

There is a plug-in that gets you part way there. See Search Replace Transfer. There is a Location to Keywords / IPTC Extension option. If you contact the author, John Beardsworth, he may be able to advise more.

 

[johnbeardy]

The plugin lets me (anyone) enter locations in those IPTC fields and then automatically copy them to keywords.

One great thing in LR is that those 4 fields are easy to target. So they can appear as Library Filter columns or in Smart Collections. The four levels need some thought to adapt to countries like the UK where country might be used for UK or England - the latter is perhaps more future-proofed.

 

[John R Ellis]

I've taken a similar approach to Califdan. While I geotag most of my photos and use LR's address suggestions (which come from Google), they're not very useful for the backcountry. Though, as johnbeardy points out, the Library Filter bar's Metadata browser does have separate columns for Country/State-Province/City/Sublocation, the columns can be very fussy to use with large numbers of items (tiny scroll bar, truncated text, no searching/filtering by using the keyboard), especially when you know the name of a City or Sublocation but not the containing State/Province. When entering new locations, the Metadata panel will auto-suggest previously entered values to make it more likely you'll enter the same spelling (e.g. for a Sublocation), but you can still end up with multiple variants for the same location. I find it much easier to enter and search keywords using my Any Tag plugin, which lets you type just a few characters to find the right keyword and warns you when you try to enter a new keyword.

Further, in the past, some of the online services to which I published either didn't make the IPTC location fields visible or put them in inconvenient locations, while it was easier to get the keywords to display more visibly. I haven't revisited this issue in several years, so I don't know the current state of things for these services.

 

[johnbeardy]

Given that the four fields date from way back, I'd be surprised if any services have changed to make more use of them.