Bridge Camera Raw adjustments not seen in Photo Mechanic

[bendypath]

I have a collection of 10,000 scans of old photos saved in the TIF format. Over the years I have been using Bridge to make Camera Raw adjustments to most of them. When I view the TIF files in Photo Mechanic I can not see the adjustments I have made in Bridge/ACR other than a dotted line for crops. I have found preferences in Bridge to update JPEG previews for DNG files, but not for TIF files. Hopefully I explained this well, if not let me know.

Questions:
1) What can I do to see the Adobe Camera Raw adjustments in Photo Mechanic?
2) When I move to another non-Adobe raw editor such as Camera One, will I be able to see the adjustments in Photo Mechanic?

Thanks in advance!  Steve.

[Kirk Baker]

Steve,

I have a collection of 10,000 scans of old photos saved in the TIF format. Over the years I have been using Bridge to make Camera Raw adjustments to most of them. When I view the TIF files in Photo Mechanic I can not see the adjustments I have made in Bridge/ACR other than a dotted line for crops. I have found preferences in Bridge to update JPEG previews for DNG files, but not for TIF files. Hopefully I explained this well, if not let me know.

Questions:
1) What can I do to see the Adobe Camera Raw adjustments in Photo Mechanic?

What kind of TIF files are these?  PM should be able to show a TIF file as it was saved (unless it is really a RAW file).  Are you saving your adjusted file over the original?  If not, then PM isn't going to 'see' these updates because the image hasn't been updated.

2) When I move to another non-Adobe raw editor such as Camera One, will I be able to see the adjustments in Photo Mechanic?

Not likely unless that RAW editor updates the preview within the RAW file.  DNG files usually have their previews updated but I don't know if C1 supports DNG completely.

In order for PM to show you your adjustments, PM would have to have the same RAW rendering technology as the program you used to make the adjustments.  This, as you might imagine, would be no simple task for us to duplicate.  We don't have the resources to write a number of RAW converter technology to mimic other applications output.  It just isn't feasible.

-Kirk

[bendypath]

Kirk - Thanks so much for your quick reply. I was not saving the adjusted TIF file over the original as I did not want to make destructive changes to the original scan. I was just clicking 'Done' and when I returned to Bridge the adjustments were displayed. What I did not understand is that adjustments made by clicking 'Done' could not be read and displayed by non-Adobe software like Photo Mechanic.

Fortunately the keywords and description in my TIF, DNG, JPG, NEF, ARW files created by Bridge can be read by Photo Mechanic and other non-Adobe software.

I will need to rethink my workflow and which software to use. My main goal is that my photo archive and adjustments made to the photos do not rely on any software publisher or system and can easily be moved to other software when desired.

Photo Mechanic seems like the best software to 1) browse & search my large photo collection, 2) create on the fly slide shows for my computer screen, 3) add and embed keywords and descriptions, 4) batch rename files, and 5) export to JPEG's when needed.

Hmmm. Lots to think about. I just do not want to keep paying Adobe every month!