Changing single field(s) in "Location taken" metadata

[jfisch]

Hi folks, new (and happy) PM+ user here.

I'm currently in the process of adding metadata to my smallish collection of about 20k pictures, and I'm starting with adding location data. My desired incremental workflow for this looks like the following:

In browse mode, I sort by capture time and select a bunch of photos taken in the same country and apply a metadata template that sets "World Region", "Country" and "Country Code" to the corresponding values in the "Locations taken" IPTC field. This allows me to set basic location (Country, Continent) information quickly on chronologically continuous sets of pictures.

Now in a second step, I want to drill down into a specific country, and set the city where the image was taken to the IPTC's Location taken -> City field. In a third step, I want to drill down in the specific cities and then set the specific sub location field.

However, unlike the "Location (legacy)" fields, the "Location taken" fields can only be set in a whole-or-nothing approach. So if I just set e.g. the "City" field for "Location taken" and leave others blank, the other information (e.g. Country, Country Code, etc) gets removed from the metadata. I have tried using the corresponding variables (e.g. {countrytaken} in the Location Shown's Country field), but those don't get expanded.

As a workaround, I started using the legacy Location fields (which can be set on a per-field basis) and finally, set up a metadata template that copies from Location fields to Location Taken fields using variables. This works, but feels weird and sluggish.

Is there a way to preserve single fields in the "Location Taken" IPTC metadata section?

Thanks!

[Kirk Baker]

Is there a way to preserve single fields in the "Location Taken" IPTC metadata section?

No.  It is as you discovered, an all-or-nothing approach.  There is only one "Apply" checkbox for the set of fields.  We would have to add additional apply checkboxes (and deal with the incompatibilities this would cause when using older saved metadata templates.)

-Kirk

[jfisch]

Thanks for your reply. I do fully understand the backwards compat issues with adding checkboxes where there previously were none.

This might have been discussed before, but is there any reason that a variable doesn't expand to the current value of the corresponding field in the metadata? E.g. if I put {locationtaken} into the "Sublocation" field of "Location taken", it is set literally (e.g. the field will be set to the literal string {locationtaken}). The variable expands just fine when used in other fields. I think this is true for all fields (at least those I've tested), and it's the same for the metadata template as well as for the metadata pad.

If one could use the field's variable in its field, this would basically allow for all kind of nice field manipulations (e.g. pre- and appending text, applying modifiers, etc). Or is this already supported, and I just missed how to do it?

[Kirk Baker]

It becomes recursive if the variable for a field is evaluated in that field.

-Kirk