It seems clairvoyant because it contains 20 years of input from hard-working pros. What makes Photo Mechanic so refreshingly new is that unlike all the other software sent to me almost always by eager newcomers, Photo Mechanic has been around for over twenty years of continuous development with daily input from full-time pros. Searching for software to see what I shot, sort and pick out the winners for publication or submission in anticipation of Mac Catalina, Photo Mechanic clearly wins. iView Media Pro eventually became Phase One Media Pro, and as Mac operating systems developed, Media Pro didn't keep up, became buggier, was discontinued, and as of Mac Catalina won't even run. I tried it back at the beginning, and preferred iView Media Pro, which until 2019 I used all day, every day, to see what I had shot and pick the winners for publication. CR2 files weighing in at about 1GB.Photo Mechanic by Camera Bits has been the world's standard for professional photo sorting software since it came out back in the late 1990s at the dawn of professional digital cameras for news and sports use. The first test consisted of 40 mixed raw images from different cameras, each about 20MB, and a larger import of 246. I tested using a Retina MacBook with a 2.3GHz Core i7 processor and 8GB RAM. I performed a couple of ingest speed tests, pitting Photo Mechanic against Aperture and Lightroom. I could, however choose a subfolder, for example, if multiple cameras had recorded to the card and created separate folders. This meant that if I had a huge SD card full of images, I could only import everything that Photo Mechanic hadn't previously imported. One thing that I didn't love was that I couldn't select thumbnails of the images for import beforehand, as I could in Lightroom. "Ingesting" Your Photos with Photo Mechanic The ingest process can open a contact sheet during import, erase source media after import, and automatically unmount the media when done. Not being able to see the actual result of a crop seems kind of pointless, though you can show the cropped out area darkened. ![]() ![]() The crop tool isn't as sophisticated as Lightroom's and doesn't actually even crop your view of the image it only takes effect (optionally) if you export the image. It also offers the single actual editing option in the program: cropping. This view shows a histogram for the image, with the ability to highlight blown out or lost dark areas, helpful for selecting images to keep. The preview interface lets you do side-by-side (or above and below) comparisons. As with other pro-level image apps, Photo Mechanic makes good use of keyboard shortcuts: You can use these to zoom, select, rate, and rotate images, as well as to upload them or send them to an external editor such as Photoshop.įour buttons appear in the corners of an image thumbnail when you hover the mouse over it: rotate left, rotate right, magnifying glass to open preview, and i for information in the form of a large IPTC sheet. Even CyberLink's $99.99 PhotoDirector has these color labels. Color-coding photos for different uses and subjects is now standard in high-end photo apps. A search bar to the right works well, and is surrounded by upload (to FTP, SmugMug, Flickr, and more), burn to disc, and color matching buttons.Īlong the bottom edge of the main interface, you'll see basic photo info at the left, and rating (the standard 1 to 5) and color-coding options to the right. Photo Mechanic uses the word "tag" in a non-standard way: other apps call this pick or flag, instead using the word tag to mean keyword descriptive tags. Thumbnail view in Photo Mechanic can be enlarged with a slider right at the top of the window, and I could sort images by capture time, modified time, filename, rating, and more.Ī view filter dropdown lets you restrict displayed thumbnails to tagged, untagged, or selected images. ![]() Nor does it let you group similar photos into "stacks" to help with selection the way those apps do. The interface doesn't support the two most recent Mac OS X versions' full-screen modes, as Lightroom and Aperture do. (Most other photo apps use the term "import," while "ingest" is more common in the pro video arena.) You can ingest only new photos or everything on the card. An optional "IPTC Stationery Pad" offers a wealth of description such as location, licensing, and even detailed information about any model shot. When you insert digital photo media, the app's "Ingest" dialog pops up with choices for source, destination, and whether to only import raw camera files. A left panel shows your computer's disk folder structure. ![]() Interface As you'd expect from a pro-level program, Photo Mechanic's interface is no-nonsense. Best Hosted Endpoint Protection and Security Software.
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