Graham,
If you convert your ORF files to DNG, the DNG files will preview in Photo Mechanic extremely fast. The slow case is turning on RAW rendering via the Adobe DNG Converter which PM is using as a RAW renderer. If you're going to convert your ORF files to DNG and then stay with DNG, turn RAW rendering off in Photo Mechanic. Then you'll only take the slow path once (the initial conversion to DNG). All subsequent work with the DNGs in Photo Mechanic should be fast.
Thanks Kirk, but I'm slightly confused:
If I turn on DNG rendering "on" does it just render the raw as a DNG and then delete it, so it needs to render it again if I open that file again. Is that why that option is slow.
It will only be rendered once, its embedded JPEG extracted to a 'render cache' to be used for all thumbnail and preview needs. It is slow because the Adobe DNG Converter is slow to launch, will only render one file from the command line, and is slow even after it finished initialization. It is meant to bulk convert an entire folder's worth of images, but that doesn't work well for our purposes so we give it one image at a time and never have more than one conversion going at a time.
That's why it is slow.
I assumed, that if I switched DNG rendering on (with PM6 Plus) that all files would have DNGs created and stored in the database. Having said that, rereading your other replies, I'm now not sure this is what happens.
The render cache system works for Photo Mechanic 6 and for Photo Mechanic Plus. There is no database, just a folder and file structure stored and managed locally based on your Render settings (you can control how large it can get and when it starts deleting old files.)
So, Are you suggesting that I leave rendering switched off, but choose the convert ORFs into DNGs during ingest option, so I would end up with ORFs and DNGs sat beside each other in my file folders, and both being catalogued. If I did this is there some automatic way of only converting ORFs as I wouldn't want my NEFs converted.
Not during Ingest since we don't offer such an option. You would do this manually when you see fit.
But I confess, while I'm happy with the idea of DNGs inside the catalogue, I don't really want to clutter my hard drive with them. If I am going to end up with a second file (DNG) just to evaluate sharpness I wonder if taking a higher quality JPEG alongside the raw, might be a simpler process. I'm not sure how PM works with files that have a matching raw and JPEG, it's not something I've thought of before.
If you can shoot RAW+JPEG (and produce a high quality JPEG) then this will work fantastically with Photo Mechanic/Plus. Photo Mechanic will pair the two (optionally you can keep them separated if you really want to but it would defeat the purpose!) and will use the JPEG for all thumbnail and preview use. When editing, you can choose if the JPEG or the RAW is sent to your editor. Metadata changes/renaming/tagging/rating/color labeling will all be in sync.
If you don't mind shooting RAW+JPEG with your camera, it will by far be the best solution if you don't mind wasting the extra space. Or if your camera allows you to control the size and quality of the embedded JPEG in your ORF files, then choose the highest resolution/fine quality preview.
HTH,
-Kirk
