Even though you certainly take pictures in many different places, you probably regularly take some at home, the office, some family or friends’ place, our simply at your favorite beach or garden. Just as with many parameters in Lightroom, location data (GPS coordinates, country, state, city,…) can be added as a preset, so you can save yourself some time by adding your favorite places to the presets list.
Creating a location preset
- Click on the Preset list in the Metadata panel, either from the library or map module, and select Edit Presets…
You could also do it from the menu (Metadata > Edit Metadata Presets…) or from the contextual menu (right-click) in any module. - Fill in the fields that you’d like to have in your preset and make sure only those are checked (check boxes are on the right side). The relevant fields are in the Camera Info and IPTC Image sections.
If you are creating a preset for a very precise location, don’t hesitate to include the GPS coordinates and altitude, as well as the sublocation. For this example, though, I just want precision down to the city.
- You can either click the Done button to close the window and you’ll be asked whether you want to save it,
or click on the dropdown list on top and do it from there.
(If you edit an existing preset, you’ll have the option to update the modified preset or save it as a new one.)
Now that you have a location preset, you can easily apply it to your pictures from the import dialog, the library and the map module. It will also be available in any other module through the contextual menu (right-click).
Preset names
The number of metadata presets can grow pretty fast once you become addicted to them. I highly advise you to come up with some sort of naming convention because that list will be displayed in alphabetical order and will contain not only location presets but also those for content type, contact info, copyright, etc…
Therefore, using a simple system will help you find the preset you’re looking for very quickly. As you can see above in step 1, I had already created this specific preset and named it location – UK – London. Further location presets could be named location – UK – Oxford or location – Belgium – Brussels.
Find a naming convention you’re comfortable with and stick to it. You won’t regret it!
Privacy issues
In order to avoid any privacy concerns if you include very detailed information (such as the GPS coordinates of a friend’s house) in your presets, I recommend that you check the Remove Location Info option when exporting pictures.
