Photo Mechanic 4.5 Public Beta for Mac OS X and Windows

[Kirk Baker]

Hello everyone,

Please post your comments and feedback on the beta in this thread only.

See the Announcements section for more information on the beta.

Thanks,

-Kirk

[peyton]

Just a really minor point.  The keypad function has now changed; once it assigned colors and now it assigns stars.  If you click on Image (in the menu) then "Set Color Class of Photo" it properly shows the new keyboard short cuts as Shift + the number (i.e. ^5) for assigning colors.  When you preview a photo, the "color block selector" at the bottom right shows the color code with just the number instead of the new proper short cut (i.e. it says "5" instead of "^5").  "5" now assigns stars.

BTW, is there a way to reassign the key pad (e.g. not having to hit shift) to assign colors?  I had worked that in my work flow.  Esp. when hitting "8" to mark photos to trash.

The IPTC Info form now shows on my end as having a scrolling function on the left to scroll around fields.  I liked having everything in one frame as it seemed more efficient to navigate. Being able to see all the fields with one view was helpful.   Is there a way to hide fields we don't need?  Right now it feels overwhelming .  The XMP data format ones I would especially like to hide.   

The update looks good in general though!  Very happy to see tabs on the Mac now.

[Kirk Baker]

Just a really minor point.  The keypad function has now changed; once it assigned colors and now it assigns stars.  If you click on Image (in the menu) then "Set Color Class of Photo" it properly shows the new keyboard short cuts as Shift + the number (i.e. ^5) for assigning colors.  When you preview a photo, the "color block selector" at the bottom right shows the color code with just the number instead of the new proper short cut (i.e. it says "5" instead of "^5").  "5" now assigns stars.

Early in the beta testing phase people requested that the 5-star ratings become the easier of the two systems to apply.  Later in the beta testing some people said that they wanted the old key mappings back.

BTW, is there a way to reassign the key pad (e.g. not having to hit shift) to assign colors?  I had worked that in my work flow.  Esp. when hitting "8" to mark photos to trash.

I plan to add a preference to choose whether you want 5-star centric keys or color class centric keys.  Hopefully before we go final.

The IPTC Info form now shows on my end as having a scrolling function on the left to scroll around fields.  I liked having everything in one frame as it seemed more efficient to navigate. Being able to see all the fields with one view was helpful.   Is there a way to hide fields we don't need?  Right now it feels overwhelming .  The XMP data format ones I would especially like to hide.   

Complete customization of the IPTC Info and IPTC Stationery Pad dialogs is planned for an update for version 4.5.

-Kirk

[Taisei]

Great! It works fine with Japanese.

Now I have to carefully decide which default IPTC Encoding 'Shift-JIS' or 'EUC-Japanese' to be applied as well as if I should check Write as Unicode or not.


Thank you.

Taisei from Tokyo

[Kirk Baker]

Taisei,

Great! It works fine with Japanese.

Now I have to carefully decide which default IPTC Encoding 'Shift-JIS' or 'EUC-Japanese' to be applied as well as if I should check Write as Unicode or not.

Unicode can contain all Japanese characters, but some programs, including PhotoshopCS3 beta do not understand IPTC records encoded in UTF-8.  Switching to XMP (as long as all applications involved understand XMP) solves this problem because XMP is always encoded in UTF-8.

There is also a tool on the Tools menu that will convert IPTC encodings for you if you want to translate back and forth between different encodings.

HTH,

-Kirk

[Jan]

Hello,

first thx for the Beta ;-)

I run the Beta on a PC with Windows XP prof
When i launched the Beta the first time it gives me the hint that my Quicktime version 7.1 is to old, but there is no newer one...

Then the as others mentioned before, the iptc-dialog is to big and not satisfiable in the workflow, because i have to scroll to much.

Starting the Beat thems as fast as the old one 4.4.3.3.

Well funny thing with 4.4.3.3 now it does not recognise anymore subfolders, after i installed the beta parallel to the existing version in a new folder.

Regards Philipp

[Jan]

Well funny thing with 4.4.3.3 now it does not recognise anymore subfolders, after i installed the beta parallel to the existing version in a new folder.


After uninstalling the Beta and reinstalling 4.4.3.3. everything works fine again.

[Kirk Baker]

Philipp,

I run the Beta on a PC with Windows XP prof
When i launched the Beta the first time it gives me the hint that my Quicktime version 7.1 is to old, but there is no newer one...

Then the as others mentioned before, the iptc-dialog is to big and not satisfiable in the workflow, because i have to scroll to much.

You have resized the window haven't you?  It is resizable.

Starting the Beat thems as fast as the old one 4.4.3.3.

I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're saying?  What is a "Beat thems"?

Well funny thing with 4.4.3.3 now it does not recognise anymore subfolders, after i installed the beta parallel to the existing version in a new folder.

You should uninstall 4.4.3.3 then install 4.5.  To go back to 4.4.3.3, uninstall 4.5, then reinstall 4.4.3.3.

-Kirk

[kanekikapu]

thanks for putting this together, its really looks great and lots of good useful features=)

i really like the idea of enabling simpleviewer gallery be generated within PM as it will def. improve my workflow even more. i'v just did a few sample gallery and its real nice. one minor bug (?) i noticed is that the thumbnails seems blurry compare to a same gallery generated by using simpleviewer alone. is there a way to get around this?

- Stephen

[Taisei]

Copied files become invisible in Finder.

I copied a couple of images from folder A to folder B. They were successfully copied and you can browse them with Photo Mechanic.
But when you open the folder B, no file is visble.  I checked the folder with a File System Browser that shows invisible files and found the images.

I renamed the copied images (invisible in the Finder) with PM, it became visible.

It happens only on my Mac (10.3.9), doesn't happen to my colleague's Mac (10.4).
Do you have any idea?


Taisei

[charlesteton]

20 second with the 4.5 beta and it looks like a great upgrade... Previews are much more zippy on my PowerBook G4... Yipeee...

[daveh]

Intel MacBook, OSX 10.4.9.

Can not seem to open captions saved in XMP format.

4.4.3.3 can still open my saved XMP captions.

[daveh]

Where has the code replacement dialogue box gone to?

I can't seem to find it.

TIA

[Kirk Baker]

Stephen,

thanks for putting this together, its really looks great and lots of good useful features=)

i really like the idea of enabling simpleviewer gallery be generated within PM as it will def. improve my workflow even more. i'v just did a few sample gallery and its real nice. one minor bug (?) i noticed is that the thumbnails seems blurry compare to a same gallery generated by using simpleviewer alone. is there a way to get around this?

I have noticed this too.  I think what is happening is that SimpleViewer wants the thumbnails to be square, and since most photos are not square or do not have square crops on them then SimpleViewer does some sort of on-the-fly image manipulation and the quality is really bad.  So for now there is no workaround, but I'll see what I can do about making the template capable of generating a square image for SimpleViewer.

-Kirk

[Kirk Baker]

Taisei,

Copied files become invisible in Finder.

I copied a couple of images from folder A to folder B. They were successfully copied and you can browse them with Photo Mechanic.
But when you open the folder B, no file is visble.  I checked the folder with a File System Browser that shows invisible files and found the images.

I renamed the copied images (invisible in the Finder) with PM, it became visible.

It happens only on my Mac (10.3.9), doesn't happen to my colleague's Mac (10.4).
Do you have any idea?

No idea, but I'll look into the issue and try to fix it before the final 4.5 version.  How did you do the copy?  Via drag and drop?  With the Copy dialog?

-Kirk