GeoMatch
GeoMatch help
1. The apps and words used here
| Lightroom Classic | Adobe's photo app on your Mac where you import and edit the photos from your camera. GeoMatch runs inside it. (Not the newer app called just “Lightroom”, and not Lightroom on a phone.) |
|---|---|
| Photos | Apple's Photos app on your Mac. When your iPhone syncs with iCloud Photos, your iPhone pictures appear here, each with the place and time it was taken. GeoMatch reads them from here. |
| Camera photos | Photos from your stand-alone camera (Sony, Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm…) that you imported into Lightroom Classic. These are the ones GeoMatch adds locations to. |
| Geotag | Adding the place a photo was taken (its GPS position) to the photo's information. |
| Capture time | The date and time your camera recorded when you took the photo. It's only as right as the camera's clock. |
| Plug-in | An add-on that adds new commands to Lightroom Classic. GeoMatch is a plug-in. |
2. Install GeoMatch
- Get GeoMatch from Adobe Exchange, Adobe's store for plug-ins. The Adobe Creative Cloud app on your Mac — the one you use to install Lightroom Classic — installs it for you.
- Quit Lightroom Classic if it's open, then open it again. Plug-ins are only picked up when Lightroom Classic starts.
- To check it's there: in Lightroom Classic, open the File menu at the top of the screen and choose Plug-in Manager…. GeoMatch appears in the list on the left.
3. Let Lightroom Classic read your Photos library (once)
GeoMatch needs to look at your iPhone photos in the Photos app's library. macOS protects that library, so you give Lightroom Classic permission once. GeoMatch only reads it — it never changes anything in Photos — and nothing leaves your Mac.
The first time you use GeoMatch, a window called GeoMatch — set up access to your Photos library opens and walks you through this. The steps are:
- In that window, click Open Full Disk Access Settings. Your Mac's System Settings opens on the Privacy & Security › Full Disk Access page.
- Find Adobe Lightroom Classic in the list and turn its switch on. macOS may ask for your Mac password or Touch ID.
Not in the list? Click the + button under the list, open the Applications folder, then the Adobe Lightroom Classic folder, select Adobe Lightroom Classic and click Open. - macOS may offer Quit & Reopen for Lightroom Classic — click it. Otherwise, quit Lightroom Classic yourself and open it again. The permission only takes effect after a restart.
- Run GeoMatch again (next section). If the setup window doesn't appear, you're done.
Photos library somewhere else, or more than one? In Lightroom Classic, choose File › Plug-in Manager…, click GeoMatch on the left, and in the GeoMatch section click Choose… next to Photos library. Pick the library your iPhone photos sync to. Test Access there tells you whether everything is working.
4. Add locations to your photos
- In Lightroom Classic, go to the Library module (click Library at the top right, or press G).
- Select the camera photos you want to add locations to — for example, click a folder of a trip in the Folders panel on the left, then press ⌘A to select all its photos. If you select nothing, GeoMatch uses every photo in the folder or collection you're looking at.
- Open the Library menu at the top of the screen, choose Plug-in Extras, then GeoMatch: Add Locations from iPhone Photos…
- A progress bar shows at the top left of Lightroom Classic while GeoMatch reads your photos and your iPhone photos. For a large folder this can take a few seconds.
- The GeoMatch window opens. On the right, under Matched photos, each row shows one of your camera photos, the location found for it, and the iPhone photo it was matched with. Page through a few with the ‹ › buttons and check they make sense — same place, similar time of day.
- Click Geotag Photos at the bottom right. GeoMatch writes the locations into Lightroom Classic and shows how many photos it updated.
- If your camera's clock wasn't on local time, GeoMatch then offers to help fix the capture times — see section 6. You can click Later.
To see the result: select a photo in Lightroom Classic's Library module and open the Map module (top right), or look at the Metadata panel on the right for GPS, City and Country.
5. The GeoMatch window, section by section
You usually don't need to change anything — GeoMatch picks sensible settings. This is what each part does.
Top left: which photos
Shows how many photos you selected and in which folder, and how many iPhone photos GeoMatch found around those dates.
Camera clock
Your camera and your iPhone must agree on the time, or photos get matched to the wrong place. GeoMatch checks this automatically when the window opens and shows what it found under the buttons, for example “Detected: camera clock on a fixed UTC-08:00”.
| Set to | Local time where I was — you changed the camera's clock when you travelled. One fixed time zone — the camera stayed on home time while you travelled (very common). Time zone stored in the photo — for cameras that record their time zone in each photo. |
|---|---|
| Time zone | Used with “One fixed time zone”: the zone the camera's clock was on. |
| Drift (min) | If the camera's clock was a few minutes fast or slow. Usually 0. Used only for matching — it never changes your photos. |
| Detect | Runs the automatic check again. |
Matching
| Window (± min) | How far apart in time a camera photo and an iPhone photo may be and still count as the same place. 30 minutes is a good start; widen it to match more photos, narrow it to be stricter. The list on the right updates as you move the slider. |
|---|---|
| Interpolate between two iPhone photos | If you took an iPhone photo shortly before and another shortly after, GeoMatch places your camera photo in between — useful when you were walking or driving. |
| Tag with keyword | Adds the keyword GeoMatch inferred location so you can find these photos later. |
| Also redo photos already located elsewhere | Off: photos that already have a location (for example from your camera's phone app) are left alone. Photos GeoMatch located before are always updated. |
| Fill in place names and altitude | Also fills in Sublocation, City, State/Province, Country and the country code, using the address the Photos app already worked out. Fields you typed yourself are kept. |
| Write Date Created with local time zone | Records the local date and time with its time zone (for example +02:00 in Spain in summer) in the photo's Date Created field. |
Phones to use
The phones whose photos GeoMatch found. Only iPhones are ticked. If your Photos library also holds someone else's photos — a partner's, or a family shared library — untick their phone, or your photos may get their location.
Capture times
Appears when the camera's clock wasn't on local time, and lists how far off Lightroom Classic's times are, for example “354 photos: +10 h 00 min (Madrid)”. See section 6.
Matched photos (right side)
| Your photo | The camera photo from Lightroom Classic. |
|---|---|
| Location found | File name; the place in blue; Camera clock — the time as your camera recorded it; Local time — the actual time where you were; the GPS position; and which iPhone photo it came from and how many minutes apart. |
| Closest iPhone photo | A small preview of the iPhone photo from the Photos app, with its time and phone model. If the two pictures are clearly from different moments — day versus night — check the camera clock setting. |
| Geotag | Untick to skip just this photo. |
| Map | Opens the location in Apple Maps in your web browser. |
| Sync clock | Use only when you know this camera photo and the iPhone photo beside it were taken at the same moment: it adjusts the drift so they line up. |
Buttons at the bottom: Cancel closes without changing anything; Fix Capture Times Only… skips the locations and opens the capture-time helper; Geotag Photos applies the locations.
6. Fix capture times after a trip
If your camera stayed on home time while you travelled, Lightroom Classic shows the wrong times — a morning photo in Madrid might show as 11:40 pm the day before. Adobe doesn't let plug-ins change capture times, so GeoMatch guides you through Lightroom Classic's own Edit Capture Time command, one group of photos at a time. It only corrects the time zone; the camera's minutes and seconds stay exactly as recorded.
- After Geotag Photos, click Fix Capture Times… (or click Fix Capture Times Only… in the GeoMatch window).
- A small window, GeoMatch — fix capture times, opens and stays open while you work in Lightroom Classic. It lists groups such as “8,071 photos · +10 h 00 min · Madrid, Paris”.
- Click Select next to the first group. Lightroom Classic selects those photos and highlights the earliest one. The small window shows the new time to use.
- In Lightroom Classic, open the Metadata menu at the top of the screen and choose Edit Capture Time…
- In the window that opens, choose Adjust to a specified date and time, type the new time shown in the GeoMatch window, and click Change All. All photos in the group move by the same amount.
- Tick Done for that group and repeat for the next.
- When all groups are done, click All Fixed — Close. This tells GeoMatch your capture times are now local time, so it matches correctly next time.
Made a mistake? Edit › Undo in Lightroom Classic reverts the last step.
7. Save locations into your photo files
Lightroom Classic keeps changes in its catalog (its own database). To also write the locations into your photo files — so other apps can see them — select the photos in the Library module and choose Metadata › Save Metadata to Files (⌘S). For raw files this writes a small .xmp file next to each photo; the raw file itself isn't changed.
8. Undo or remove locations
- Right away: in Lightroom Classic, choose Edit › Undo.
- Find photos GeoMatch located: in the Library module, use the Library Filter bar (press \ if you don't see it), choose Text, and search for GeoMatch inferred location.
- Remove later: select the photos, then choose Library › Plug-in Extras › GeoMatch: Remove Inferred Locations… and confirm. This removes the GPS position GeoMatch added and its keyword.
9. Troubleshooting
The setup window keeps appearing
Lightroom Classic doesn't have Full Disk Access yet, or hasn't been restarted since you turned it on. Repeat section 3 and make sure you quit and reopen Lightroom Classic.
Few or no photos matched
First check Camera clock in the GeoMatch window — a wrong clock setting is the most common cause. Then try a wider Window. Photos taken during hours when you didn't use your iPhone's camera can't be matched.
A photo got a location that's clearly wrong
Look at the Closest iPhone photo for that row. If it's from someone else's phone, untick that phone under Phones to use. If it's from a different time of day, check the Camera clock setting.
No city or country, only the GPS position
The Photos app works out addresses in the background, and very recent iPhone photos may not have one yet. Try again later.
“This macOS version isn't supported yet”
Apple changed how the Photos app stores its data in a macOS update. Check Adobe Exchange for a GeoMatch update, or email us the details shown in the window.
Still stuck? Email geomatch@gl-solutions.ai. Please include your macOS version (Apple menu › About This Mac), your Lightroom Classic version (Lightroom Classic menu › About Lightroom Classic), and what you see.