Background
I’m always geotagging my photos with the help of myTracks. myTracks takes my gps track and adds IPTC location data derived from the track and google maps to my photos.
In addition I like to have the location as keywords in my photos, because I created a keyword hierarchy to organize my photos:
Unfortunately myTracks dosen’t create keywords in raw files and Lightroom has no option to import the IPTC location as keywords.
So it was my task to write my first small Lightroom plugin. Lua (the language the plugin is written in) isn’t very complicated. But the Lightroom SDK was pain in the ass. There is an API reference and a short „manual“ but most of the problems I was only able to solve with the help of other open source plugins.
The plugin is hosted on GitHub, so everyone can contribute to it.
Installation
Download the repository via the „Clone or download“ button on the Github page.
After that you can put the „locationKeywords.lrdevplugin“ where ever you want on your disk, but I recommend to put it into
/$home/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom/Modules/
After that open Lightroom and go to File > Plug-In Manager… With the button Add in the lower left corner of the Lightroom Plug-In Manager you can select the plugin directory:
Settings
The Plug-In provides three simple settings.
Parent keyword
You have the option to create the keyword hierarchy below a „Master“ keyword, e.g. „Places I have visited“ or something else. Leave it empty, if all countries should be created at the top most level of your LR keywords.
Display dialog messages if IPTC data is missing
If you have selected a photo without IPTC location a dialog message will be created while proccessing the photo. This can be very annoying, so you have the option to enable or disable it.
Create log file
For debugging reasons you can set this option to create a logfile:
($home/documents/IPTCtoKeyword.log)
Usage
- Select the photos in your library
- Go to menu ‚Library‘, ‚Plug-In Extras‘ and select ‚IPTC location to keyword hierarchy‘
Download
You can get the plugin here: