how good is photo mechanic? and how often is it updated for latest cameras/len

Mar 25, 2011
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Here is one review. There are some who love it, some hate it. I expect that its a case of matching what a photographer expects and needs. I've nothing bad to say about it.

I've quoted the bottom line of the review below the link.


Try it and see what you think, and how it fits your needs.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2410505,00.asp

"Bottom Line

Far from a full photo workflow solution, Photo Mechanic is a piece of the puzzle for professional photographers who need deep metadata capabilities and fast importing and image selection tools."
 
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They offer a free 30 day trial, give it a go.

It's amazing in the cull/tag/metadata world. It's not a photo editor and library management tool that Lightroom is. Sports shooters the world over rely on it, mostly because they can ingest everything, quickly select and check sharpness, and export with metadata. I find it much faster to cull the 50mp 5DsR photos, taking the selects into Lightroom and working on them - it saves a lot of time on import and preview generation.
 
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Mar 25, 2011
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Halfrack said:
They offer a free 30 day trial, give it a go.

It's amazing in the cull/tag/metadata world. It's not a photo editor and library management tool that Lightroom is. Sports shooters the world over rely on it, mostly because they can ingest everything, quickly select and check sharpness, and export with metadata. I find it much faster to cull the 50mp 5DsR photos, taking the selects into Lightroom and working on them - it saves a lot of time on import and preview generation.

I may try it to see if its a improvement over my Lightroom process. I have a few thousand photos to sort thru after two days of shooting next week. I am pretty used to hitting a "X" key for culls and a 1thru 5 key to rate keepers in Lightroom. After getting rid of the culls, Lightroom's X-Y compare on the split screen is pretty useful.
 
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Mar 25, 2011
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I installed it this morning, and set out to read the manual, and then tried it out a bit. As advertised, it created the jpeg thumbnails very quickly.

As other have noted, it is not a raw photo editor, and it is not a organizer.

Basically, its claim is speed of loading and carrying out operations on metadata. In that regard, its very powerful, particularly is you like command line editing.

I don't have a issue with speed in Lightroom, so I do not see a need to pay $150 for photo mechanic.
 
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pwp

Oct 25, 2010
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PhotoMechanic? I wouldn't be without it. The power, unrivaled options and flexibility make it the go-to image browser for busy working photographers across the planet. I'd tend to trust their judgement. I use it for ingest (to multiple locations) with renaming on the fly, sorting/ranking/metadata entry, convert the selects to DNG and then import into Lr.

The ingest/sorting/ranking/metadata entry part of the workflow is a frustratingly cumbersome process using Lr or Bridge when compared to PhotoMechanic. The only thing I use Bridge for now is the Output module to create PDF's.

Even faster though less fully featured is Chris Breeze's brilliant PC only image browser BreezeBrowser Pro. Nothing on the planet comes near it for speed of loading and rendering a thumbnail grid of hundreds or thousands of RAW, DNG or chunky TIFF files. A folder of several hundred JPEG's renders in a heartbeat. I'll frequently use BreezeBrowser Pro and PhotoMechanic alongside each other while managing a complex project.

In my studio there is a place for all these programs. With PhotoMechanic and BreezeBrowser Pro there is no issue with recognition of output from new cameras. In the past ten years I have only made one paid update on each of them, more out of curiosity than actual requirement. Both offer generous fully functional trial periods. Kirk Baker at PhotoMechanic is highly responsive to questions and suggestions via a well put together and moderated forum. http://forums.camerabits.com/ Several free updates are offered every year with minor fixes and tweaks.

PhotoMechanic is a program that you appreciate more the longer you use it and get to learn and understand the depth of it's strengths.

-pw
 
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Mar 25, 2011
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pwp said:
PhotoMechanic? I wouldn't be without it. The power, unrivaled options and flexibility make it the go-to image browser for busy working photographers across the planet. I'd tend to trust their judgement. I use it for ingest (to multiple locations) with renaming on the fly, sorting/ranking/metadata entry, convert the selects to DNG and then import into Lr.

The ingest/sorting/ranking/metadata entry part of the workflow is a frustratingly cumbersome process using Lr or Bridge when compared to PhotoMechanic. The only thing I use Bridge for now is the Output module to create PDF's.

Even faster though less fully featured is Chris Breeze's brilliant PC only image browser BreezeBrowser Pro. Nothing on the planet comes near it for speed of loading and rendering a thumbnail grid of hundreds or thousands of RAW, DNG or chunky TIFF files. A folder of several hundred JPEG's renders in a heartbeat. I'll frequently use BreezeBrowser Pro and PhotoMechanic alongside each other while managing a complex project.

In my studio there is a place for all these programs. With PhotoMechanic and BreezeBrowser Pro there is no issue with recognition of output from new cameras. In the past ten years I have only made one paid update on each of them, more out of curiosity than actual requirement. Both offer generous fully functional trial periods. Kirk Baker at PhotoMechanic is highly responsive to questions and suggestions via a well put together and moderated forum. http://forums.camerabits.com/ Several free updates are offered every year with minor fixes and tweaks.

PhotoMechanic is a program that you appreciate more the longer you use it and get to learn and understand the depth of it's strengths.

-pw

It is fast, after generating tiny thumbnails that load quickly. However, it must generate those thumbnails in the background before there is any advantage. It loaded a set of thumbnails to fill one page (28 images) in about 3 seconds, the same page I viewed yesterday, so thumbnails should have been generated. Lightroom loaded the same number from the same folder virtually instantly. I'm wondering now, how much of the speed claim is real. These are images already existing on my hard drive and both programs have previously loaded and presumably cached thumbnails.

Then I went to a old folder of about 700 CR2's that had not been accessed in LR for a long long time, and never in Photo Mechanic. Once again, about 2 sec for LR, but this time, 5 or 6 seconds for Photo Mechanic. I presume that this is because the several hours of program operation needed for Photo Mechanic to generate thumbnails from a large number of files has not happened. Once it happens, the two will have similar speeds.

LR lets you set the size of thumbnails you want generated. So far, from what I see, those with Lightroom issues will benefit from a program that does not require them to tweak the size of the thumbnail settings. As far as metadata, and ranking of photos, the operation seems to work the same and is limited by how fast you can type. Lightroom is very good with metadata, key words, etc, but is not as powerful as photomechanic.

The command line operations are a different story, they are powerful and you can do very complex operations assuming you are a programmer.


I'm curious though as to exactly what it does that Lightroom does not do, except let you browse tiny thumbnails quickly. You must wait if you want to enlarge them, and you must send them to a actual photo editor if you want to edit them.

There are lots of photographers who love it, and there are 1000 lightroom users for every Photomechanic user, so its not for everyone.

It is good to have a program like this that offer a a alternative, except, you still need Lightroom to organize and edit images, and I don't buy the faster to sort browse or evaluate images.
 
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I use it as a first pass when going through several thousand shots a weekend of football or baseball. Both for culling and then tagging and separating what I shoot. It's way faster than LR and I can't imagine adding in the draw time that LR adds between shots. I don't bother when it's only a couple hundred because I'll do the LR steps at the same time.
 
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I download into Lightroom directly adding metadata and develop presets. Then I use Breezebrowser Pro to cull the files. There is a magnifier tool that gives a 100% preview window on the fly, extremely useful to quickly see sharpness at 100%. Then I select the rejects and delete them in Breezebrowser. Restart Lightroom, and synchronize the folder to have Lightroom kick out the missing files. Now you're good to go.
 
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For speedy RAW viewing I'd go for a much cheaper program such as RawViewer. Just as fast for the basic advantage compared to LR import.

In the end I've always found it faster just to let LR import and work through 100% previews before editing instead of using several programs. But I have few deadlines for my work. YMMV.

If I was a sports shooter with a deadline I'd certainly prefer looking at my JPEGs to sort my shots and just refer to RAW files from my other card if absolutely needed. Cannot understand anyone in a hurry choosing to start fumbling with RAW's first.
 
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