I started geotagging my photos with Geosetter. I wrote the geodata to an xmp sidecar, and imported the sidecar metadata to LR3. Geodata worked fine, but LR also overwrote all fields even if it was blank in the imported xmp. This including copyright data which I had already set in LR, so not an optimal outcome. It also overwries keywords, instead of adding to them which would be the desired action.
How do I import non-blank fields only and/or append to existing data, avoiding overwrites?
Or would it be easier to use some geotagging plugin for LR? If so, I'm open to suggestions - Google Maps or Earth integration a must.
You have a couple of things going on here:
One is a workflow issue. Are you importing your GEODATA prior to importing to Lightroom or after? If before, are you asking Lightroom to read your metadata from the sidecar file prior to applying LR metadata? If after, are you reading the metadata back after adding the GEODATA?
I approach it like this and thus far it has worked flawlessly:
1. Import images into Lightroom-apply normal import metadata including Copyright
2. Select all imported and CTRL (CMD) S to write metadata back to XMP file.
3. Apply GEODATA (Should go back into the XMP file)
4. Reopen Lightroom, Select All and Read Metadata back from file.
Your GEODATA should be there.
When you say you "imported the sidecar metadata back into Lr" what do you mean? Can you describe the steps?
Another issue may be the configuration of any Metadata presets you may be using on import or after. If the blank values have a check mark beside them in the metadata template, they will overwrite valid data upon execution.
