Why Photo Mechanic?

[elianoimperato]

Hello to every one,

I'm Italian photographer and I use Adobe Lightroom for my works. I'm curious about Photo Mechanic but I need to understand.

Lightroom was created to combine two apps, one to manage the files (Adobe Bridge) and one to edit the files (Camera Raw). Using Lightroom you can catalog your photographs adding iptc and exif metadata and edit the photos using one app.
Using Photo Mechanic why I've to combine it with an app like Lightroom that include the same functions? Is like to use Bridge and Lightroom... if you use Bridge then you combine it with Camera Raw, otherwise you have Lightroom where are combined Bridge (or Photo Mechanic) and Camera Raw?
Where I'm doing wrong?

Best,

—

Eliano
http://www.elianoimperato.com

[Mick O (Camera Bits)]

Hello Eliano,

Thank you for the question. You probably are not doing anything wrong. :-) Certainly, every photographer has different needs and different styles of working.

As you say, Lightroom can catalog and add IPTC data to photos, but it does so without much speed and efficiency. For photographers who need to browse and cull photos more quickly without waiting for raw rendering and then add metadata, sometimes different metadata profiles, dynamic captioning shortcuts, dynamic file renaming, and then send off photos to a final destination just before deadlines the same day, there exists Photo Mechanic to do all of this and more.

The short answer is that Photo Mechanic is for doing more complex metadata and file management tasks faster than Lightroom alone. 

I hope this helps.

-Mick

 

[ron_hiner]

I'll add to Mick's comments that Lightroom works great for small volumes of photos.   If a typical shoot for you is 50 images, you don't need photomechanic.

But, if you come back from a shoot with several hundred or even thousands of images, you will save immense amounts of time by doing your culling and rating in photo mechanic, prior to moving to other tools for further processing.  Photojournalists generally don't need to do any further processing -- and are bound by industry ethics not to -- so photomechanic includes tools to upload your rated, culled and captioned images to whereever they need to end up.   But just as easily, you can use photomechanic to launch photoshop or any other tool to further edit your images.

The only thing missing from photomechanic is a catalog/database.  We know that the team is working on adding just that from statements they have made.  But we just don't know when it will be released.

Ron

[fabianlujan]

Ciao Eliano,
Come stai?

Your workflow is okay. But I'm that a workflow having PM as cataloging and metadata is more productive.

Even using Adobe Camera Raw (for editing jpg or raw) is faster than opening Lightroom, because ACR contains the whole Develop module, without loading the entire LR.

ron-hiner is right. It depends the volume of images you have to work with.
I do make thousands and PM it's a time-saver application.

Give a try!

[Linwood]

Eliano, not sure if I am misunderstanding, but if you are asking can you add ACR to PM in some way and make it a fast Lightroom replacement -- not really, at least not in the same sense.  The big piece missing is that the rendered image from ACR cannot be saved back into the embedded preview that Photomechanic is displaying.  You can save a JPG from ACR (not exactly sure how standalone) and then have JPG + RAW and use it in PM, but then you have to keep all the JPG's also.  Though it might be possible.

I personally use PM as many do --  as a front end for Lightroom.  I cull, code with (some) metadata, crop and then import to Lightroom.  Then never go back to Photo Mechanic -- but that's just fine, because then Lightroom does what it does best -- all the publishing and collections and such.  Lightroom is very fast with metadata and collections, but horrible for large volume ingestion.

[Kirk Baker]

Eliano, not sure if I am misunderstanding, but if you are asking can you add ACR to PM in some way and make it a fast Lightroom replacement -- not really, at least not in the same sense.  The big piece missing is that the rendered image from ACR cannot be saved back into the embedded preview that Photomechanic is displaying.  You can save a JPG from ACR (not exactly sure how standalone) and then have JPG + RAW and use it in PM, but then you have to keep all the JPG's also.  Though it might be possible.

If you're willing to convert your RAW files to DNG, the previews in DNGs are updated when adjusted by ACR.  You'll see your adjustments back in PM.

-Kirk

[elianoimperato]

Thank you all for the answers, I'll try it.

[IPT]

I'm new here and wanted to add a question to this thread because I too am thinking about PM. I usually use Canon's DPP to cull my images. I do shoot high volume. Is PM in some way faster then DPP? (I know LR is slow). I saw in the PM manual you can look at two images simultaneously. What wasn't clear to me was if you can "pin" one image and then scroll through the following images next to the pinned one to evaluate for sharpness or facial expressions? If a new one appears better then you "pin" that one replacing the first and keep scrolling through the following images.

[Odd Skjaeveland]

...What wasn't clear to me was if you can "pin" one image and then scroll through the following images next to the pinned one to evaluate...

Open the first image in the viewer (double click on a thumb nail image should do that). Set viewer window to split in two halves ("2 up") to have two images arranged side by side or top bottom (use icons on the upper row or use keys h or v).  Select the half-window where you want your base image (click or tab key). Use arrow keys (left/right) to browse to your base image if not already displayed. Select the other window and use arrow keys to browse images you want to compare to the base image. Select/promote the browsed image to become a new base image by pressing the g key. If I remember this correctly, the g key is a tribute to Greg Gorman. Use + and - keys to zoom.

[AL904]

...What wasn't clear to me was if you can "pin" one image and then scroll through the following images next to the pinned one to evaluate...

Open the first image in the viewer (double click on a thumb nail image should do that). Set viewer window to split in two halves ("2 up") to have two images arranged side by side or top bottom (use icons on the upper row or use keys h or v).  Select the half-window where you want your base image (click or tab key). Use arrow keys (left/right) to browse to your base image if not already displayed. Select the other window and use arrow keys to browse images you want to compare to the base image. Select/promote the browsed image to become a new base image by pressing the g key. If I remember this correctly, the g key is a tribute to Greg Gorman. Use + and - keys to zoom.

I am on a trial of PM, and I was wondering the same thing as IPT.

Thanks, Odd Skjaeveland, for the useful explanation!

[elianoimperato]

From today I'm officially a Photo Mechanic user!

[Hayo Baan]

Welcome to the club

[elianoimperato]

Welcome to the club

Thank you!

[IainS]

I am not  a photojournalist but a specialist in industrial heritage and archaeology and typically a project would have between 50 to 700 images (all shot in RAW) that require downloading and captioning. The captioning includes details of the project and what is in the frame as well as the usual stuff about copyright, location ...etc. The GPS facility is very useful because sometimes one wall looks pretty much the same as the other and the ability to set GPS location is invaluable.

PM seemed to be the only software that made doing all this easy.

I would love an improvement in the outputting of cataloguing data and a better way of turning GPS locations into dots on a map. However it works for me for what my requirements are.

Iain

[Luiz Muzzi]

Welcome to the club

Idem, ibidem.
Regards,

-Luiz Muzzi