Put Your Own Place Names Into the IPTC Fields
Scenario: you want New South Wales, not NSW — Bennelong Point, not Sydney Opera House.
This guide is for you if: your files have location data, but the names aren’t the ones you want. A stock agency wants “New South Wales, Australia” spelled out; a local newspaper wants the neighbourhood, not just the city; your own archive has its conventions. You want to decide exactly what goes into each field.
Most photo software accepts whatever the geocoding database decides about a place. Media Location Tagger treats those names as suggestions — the tool suggests, you decide. There are also real differences between sources: Apple Maps may name a place differently from Media Location Tagger’s built-in database (“The Rocks” vs. “North Sydney”, say), and neither may match the standard set by the recipient of your pictures.
Nothing is written to your files until you click an Apply button.
The four fields
The IPTC location consists of four fields, shown in the sidebar when you select files:
- Sub-location — the least standardized field. Anything from a building, room number or landmark to a park, stadium or district: “Main Auditorium, Sydney Opera House”.
- City — the city or town name.
- Province/State — “New South Wales” or “NSW”: your call.
- Country — also your call; nothing stops you from using “Australie” if your archive is French.
Each field shows the value currently stored in the file; greyed-out text is a suggestion that has not been written yet.
Step 1: Select the files
Select one or more files in the table. Fields whose values differ across the selection show multiple values; fields that agree show the shared value. Applying a field writes it to every selected file, so you can fix the naming of 800 files exactly once.
Step 2: Set each field the way you want it
For each field you want to change, do one of the following:
- Type it. Click into the field, type exactly what you want, and click the field’s Apply button.
- Pick it. Click the pop-up button next to the field. The menu offers the proposed value from the built-in database, values from any pins you have dropped on the map, and values already used by other files in the preview table — convenient for copying the data of one picture to others. Pick one and apply it.
- Start from a suggestion and edit. Pick a proposed value, adjust it — remove the “North” from “North Sydney”, say — then apply.
Working from a pin: your own names, kept
If you are applying names from a pin on the map rather than typing into the item fields, the pin’s section in the sidebar shows up to three rows per field: what Apple Maps calls the spot, what the built-in database calls it, and an editable row for what you call it. Choose Places → Show Custom Place Names to reveal the editable row (it appears by itself on pins that already have custom names). The first time you click into it, it is filled from the Apple Maps suggestion so you only change what you disagree with. Your names stay with the pin for as long as it is on the map, across relaunches.
Saving the names for next time
A spot you tag again and again — home, the studio, a regular client — is worth saving. With the pin selected, choose Places → Save Current Pin as Place… (or click the star button in the pin’s section), give it a label, and the coordinates and your four names are stored permanently. A photo or video that already carries the right GPS position and names can be saved the same way, with Places → Save Item as Place… or the star button in the item section.
To use a saved place, pick it from the Places menu, from the star button, or type part of its name into the map’s search field, where saved places are listed above Apple’s suggestions. A pin is dropped at the stored position with your names already filled in; select the files and apply as usual. Places → Manage Saved Places… lets you rename, update and delete places. They are kept in a readable JSON file (saved-places.json in the app’s Application Support folder), so you can copy them to another Mac.
Step 3: Verify
The updated values appear as the stored (non-grey) values in the sidebar, and the IPTC column shows a green check when all four fields are present. A warning triangle means the set is only partially filled — fine if that’s what you intend; the fields are independent, and you don’t have to use all of them.
Removing a single field
To clear a field rather than change it, use the Location menu: Remove Sub-location, Remove City, Remove Province/State or Remove Country — or Remove All IPTC Location Tags for all four at once. (For stripping GPS coordinates too, see removing location data.)