Geotagging place name inconsistency

[Londoner]

I imported a folder of photographs taken in the Alpes-Maritimes Department of France. All were geotagged.

Alpes-Maritimes is part of the Region of Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur.

Photo Supreme inserted location data into the IPTC, placing some photos in Alpes-Maritimes and some in Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur. There appears to be no reason why photos were placed differently, as two taken a moment apart were placed in different locations.

Technically all were correct, as any photo in Alpes-Maritimes is also in Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur. But the main problem is that in the Places Category they are separated. I have 40 in Alpes-Maritimes and 175 in Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur. This is very inconvenient for one shoot in one location. If I subsequently visit Provence and take pictures there, they will appear in Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur and it will become harder to select my shots from the Alpes-Maritimes shoot.

Any advice would be gratefully received.

[Hert]

When you import images that have pre-existing GEO info in the metadata then it is imported as is. You can assign the wrong images to the correct place label, then sync again to get it updated in the files.

[Londoner]

Thanks for the response, and my apologies for not getting back to you sooner.

I should have specified my issue more precisely.

Why is it that PS identified some images as being in Alpes Maritimes, and some as being in Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur when the GPS data was the same and each location description was correct? The only difference is that Alpes Maritimes is a more precise location.

It is the inconsistency of treatment of the same data that is the concern. It is a bore to have to go through a lot of images and correct inconsistencies in an automated operation.

[Hert]

That is what I was trying to explain. Your image data probably already had this inconsistency before you imported them to PSU. PSU read what was already in your images and created hierarchies for it. If you want to clean things up and these images contain GEO coordinates then select all these images and run a reverse lookup on them. Otherwise you'll have to clean things up your self and merge labels together.

PSU won't automatically clean up whatever you already have in your metadata. It assumes that what is there is already nice and tidy. If not, it offers you the means to clean it up.

[Londoner]

The image data was not inconsistent.

The geotagging identified all the images as being in Alpes-Maritimes.

Photo Supreme identified some of the images as being in Alpes-Maritimes.

It identified other images as being in Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur, of which Alpes-Maritimes is part.

Example - image §1827 is identified as A-M, and image §1828, taken at the same place a few seconds later is identified as P-A-C. Nothing in the metatdata of those images justifies that distinction at all.

To put it in a US context, in case this helps, it is as if a lot of photos were geotagged San Francisco, but some were shown in Dynamic Search as being in California and some in San Francisco. Both are correct, but they are different.

This is the third issue I have raised where PS has not consistently identified and/or categorised pre-existing data.

[Hert]

You say that PSU "geotagging identified" but please tell me what steps you did in PSU to tell it to "identify geo locations" with this inconsistency as a result.

[Londoner]

When I imported the images, I found that a number were categorised as not geotagged, although all were.

Following advice to my post on this issue, I selected the images categorised by PS as ungeotagged, right clicked and selected Metadata>Read Metadata from file. I also clicked Save Metadata to file. The images then moved to category geotagged, correctly. Also, the GEO Tag button at the bottom right revealed the correct map location. The IPTC location data was edited to remove my previous (manually inserted in Photo Mechanic) location data, and to replace it with location data based on the geotag location. At this stage the manually inserted location of Alpes-Maritimes was replaced by Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur.

Having gone over this again, I think I may have identified the source of the issue. It seems that GEO Reverse Lookup was not consistently applied on import. For the images categorised as Alpes-Maritimes, I have Selected Operations>GEO reverse lookup, and this has had the result that all such images have been recategorised as Provence-Alpes-Cote D'Azur. So they are now all consistent.

However, the issue remains that on import some files in the same batch had reverse geo lookup applied, and some did not. I do not know why this was the case.

[Hert]

On import no GEO Reverse Lookup takes place, ever. Import reads metadata from the file that is already there. Great that you found the features to correct the inconsistencies.

[vlad]

Never say (n)ever: an import profile does have the option to "Reverse Lookup details for existing GEO Tags". (I think that's a useful option, btw - just like the assignment of nearby labels.)

[Hert]

Thank you for the correction. I didn't think of that setting in the context of this topic.

[Londoner]

It is a very useful setting.

I will continue to experiment and if any further issues arise I will report back.

Thanks, all, for the help.

[Gardenrodent]

Hi
I too have noticed an inconsistency with the location imports, while testing with a small number of pictures I had one which produced two slightly different locations on two successive runs. I raised this and a couple of other issues in a new topic 'import differences'.

Cheers

Bob