My final issue is wondering whether there's a way to use places as you would in IPhoto - can I name them, or set an area for them to come under one place?
No, we cannot name places like we could in Aperture or iPhoto.
But we can type the latitude and longitude of a location into the Info panel, where it says "Assign a location". Enter the coordinates as decimals in degrees, first the latitude , a space, then the longitude.
Photos will look up a name for the location in its database. You need a network connection. And accept the silly location names Photos sometimes will come up with.
I am simply keeping a text file with the names of locations I am frequently visiting and the latitude and longitude of these places. This makes it easy to look them up and copy and paste them.
Or, if you want to copy the GPS from one photo to other photos use an Apple Script.
Select all photos that need the same location assigned and put them into an album. Add a photo with the correct location as the first photo to this album.
Then run this Apple Script: Script: Copy GPS tags from one Photo to Other Photos
It will copy the GPS from the first photo in the album to all other photos in the album.
And this script copies the GPS of a selected photo to the clipboard, so you can save it in a text file:
Script: Extract the Numerical GPS Values Using an Apple Script
