Windows Vista, 8gig Ram, Version 4.6.6 + macbookpro 10.6.4
Some of these may have been covered in other posts but as I have come into this software at 4.6.5, I hope I can highlight problems that slow down the workflow and need addressing to make this the best keywording solution on the market. I can over from Bridge and I am glad I did, but there are some major problems that I encounter regularly that need addressing.
I mainly keyowrd and caption images for agencies and my own stock library, using the IPTC info, IPTC Stationery Pad, Structured Keywords, Keywords Panel.
IPTC Keywords Box.
- Its like programming through a letterbox. this needs to be much bigger with a variable font size like the description window and user definable size. I use a professional NEC 1920 X 1280 monitor so you can see the problems. I dont want to be switching between resolutions just to add keywords and it makes my eyes ache.
- Ability to hide unused fields or just have a new user defined Info box where the user can specifiy what they use, in my case I only need Caption and Keywords when I am blasting through my images, again make with user definable font and window sizes. I would love a huge box that I could keep on my second monitor for instance.
Find and Replace
This has to be the biggest headache of all. Removing keywords with this tool is a complete nightmare and extremely scary, which often leaves the user repairing the devestation with regret. The problem lies in the way it removes keywords. If I want to remove 'grand' from the keywords and leave the word 'grandeur', by putting 'grand' into the top field and leaving the bottom one blank, Photomechanic will remove 'grand' from 'grandeur' as well, leaving the word 'er'! Imagine the problems trying to then remove 'er' from 200images. Then the problem compounds even further - Use Find and Replace again by putting 'er' into the top field, bottom one blank again, and it will then take these two letters from every word containing 'er' ie - letter turns into lett, boxer into box, and on it goes..... First time I had this problem it took me a few hours to police over 350 images I had. Please change the following =
- make a 'find whole words only' check box or something similar, so this can never happen again.
- make an Undo function, to reverse keyword mistakes. I always know when something has gone wrong, in the case of 'grand' and 'grandeur' for example becasue it will have 'removed 280 words from 140 images'.... I then have use the find tool to ascertain which images are effected and then use Adobe Bridge to remove the rogue 'er' or similar.
PC / MAC differences.
The 4.6.6 version on the Mac has made a huge improvement when adding and removing keywords / handling IPTC updates. Adding a keyword to 50 images lets say, sees the Mac progress bar screaming along. On the PC, the problem is now twice as slow. This seems to be something to do with the way that the software insists on redrawing the thumbnails / reading new IPTC data after the image has been updated across an entire folder. Again with large 16bit TIFFs, this causes the whole process to crawl. In the PC 4.6.5, when an image IPTC content like keywords was changed, the text would go red below the thumbnail and then the software would redraw / reread the IPTC content, slowing things down, agreed, but the MAC now seems to handle this far better than the PC. Imagine the problems again I have faced, adding batches of keywords to 200 16bit TIFF images in one go. Refresh after refresh slows this down. Try doing this with two different bits of software like Bridge (to edit my keyowrd removals as explained above) and the problem is ridiculous. Make and alteration in Bridge and wait 5mins for PhotoMechanic to update. I need to keep this process all inside PM, not across other bits of software. (so why I am writing this post
)
The MAC version seems like a huge improvement on this front. Progress bars are snappy, no slow redraw / reread. Now it seems as thought all that has happened on the PC version update to improve the speed is that this refresh process has been put into the IPTC Update process, integrating it rather than doing the update and then rereading afterwards. I want to go back to using version 4.6.5 to be honest, (as at least when the rereading process was happening I could at least carry updating my images). I suppose I could just use the MAC, but my MAC is a 13"notebook, so I would rather not.
IPTC Info Box
After already stating the keywords field needs addressing, also consider a way of alphabetically organising keywords in the IPTC Info panel with a tick box similar to the Structured keywords Panel to tidy things up. As I add keywords to my images in the IPTC Info panel, I have no option but to open up the 'Edit Keywords...' or 'Structured Keywords' panel to organise them alphabetically. Perhaps make an option called Tidy Up or something where it could batch reorganise the keywords in a folder alphabetically.
Please end my find and replace hell, if you can do anything in the above list its this one that I would be so grateful for. Its great software, but its still not quite there yet. I do hope my feedback helps.
Barry
