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Can I manually geotag pictures in Photos on a computer running Big Sur?

When Apple dropped iPhoto in favor of Photos several years ago, I opted to load iPhoto onto my desktop computer because Photos didn't have one feature that was critical to me: the ability to geotag manually any pictures that weren't geotagged automatically in the camera when they were taken. Using iPhoto rather than Photos has worked well for me since we purchased a new iMac with El Capitan several years ago. I also had put iPhoto on our MacBook Pro at the same time, although I don't actually use it on that computer.


I just found out, when we purchased a MacBook Air running Big Sur last week, that iPhoto isn't supported any longer because it was a 32-bit application. So I'm stuck with Photos now. What I'm wondering now is this: When we replace the iMac at sometime in the not-too-distant future, will I be able to geotag manually any photos that I scan into the computer from negatives? I have 24 years' worth of 35-mm negatives that I'm slowly getting scanned into the computer, as well as another dozen years' worth of digital photos that were taken with a camera that didn't automatically geotag photos. Will I be able to assign a location, either by using GPS coordinates or by dragging and dropping a pin on a map, to those un-geotagged pictures? Or will I have to purchase some third-party software that permits manual geotagging and then transfer tens of thousands of pictures into it and set up new keywords for each one of them?



iMac 21.5″, OS X 10.11

Posted on Apr 12, 2021 8:45 AM

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Posted on Apr 12, 2021 12:55 PM

Hang on, I'll try....


Just typed in Bronx Botanical Garden, and was offered the list in the second screenshot. I chose Bronx Zoological Gardens and got the pin on the map shown in the first screenshot. This for an image in south Cheshire UK :-)


The best way to see if it meets your needs is to add a single image to photos on your new laptop, and try some locations (Select the image, then hit CMD-i to open the info pane, and type your locations into the location line. You can also try some GPS coordinates)



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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Apr 12, 2021 12:55 PM in response to GrammaHobbit

Hang on, I'll try....


Just typed in Bronx Botanical Garden, and was offered the list in the second screenshot. I chose Bronx Zoological Gardens and got the pin on the map shown in the first screenshot. This for an image in south Cheshire UK :-)


The best way to see if it meets your needs is to add a single image to photos on your new laptop, and try some locations (Select the image, then hit CMD-i to open the info pane, and type your locations into the location line. You can also try some GPS coordinates)



Apr 12, 2021 9:23 AM in response to GrammaHobbit

The simple answer is yes. You can type in a town, or can put in Lat/Long coordinates.


The slightly more complex answer. There have been some bugs recently with gps coordinates where a (for example) coastal location might get shifted to the center of an (for example) ocean. It looks like that is mostly fixed, though of course it is not possible to check all locations.

Apr 12, 2021 11:58 AM in response to TonyCollinet

I guess I should have been more specific. Typing in the name of a city or town doesn't narrow down the place enough. For example, if I took a picture at the Bronx Botanical Garden, would I be stuck with typing in "New York, NY," and finding a pin stuck on Central Park in Manhattan, or could I type in the name of a feature or a street address and have the location of the photo nailed down accurately?

Apr 12, 2021 2:43 PM in response to TonyCollinet

Bingo!!! (Actually, if you'd clicked on "New York Botanical Garden," you'd have hit the nail on the head, instead of getting the Bronx Zoo (which actually is right next door to the botanical garden). When we lived there, over a half century ago, we always called it the Bronx Botanical Garden, but I guess that "New York Botanical Garden" is the correct title.


The bottom line is that you've answered my question. And now I have a related one: If the place I would like to pin doesn't have either a street address or a formal name (an unnamed spot on the bank of a river, for example, or a state line or a milepost on an Interstate highway), can I drag that pin from a different location (e.g. the nearest town) to the actual spot where I took the picture? That was how I used to handle odd locations in iPhoto, and it worked well. But I'd like to be able to do the same thing in Photos, if it's possible.


Oh, I love your shot from Cheshire! We've never been there, but we've been close, in parts of the North Country.

Can I manually geotag pictures in Photos on a computer running Big Sur?

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