How do I add existing RAW files to the contact sheet?

[Henry-In-Florida]

Hi All,
Just started using Photo Mechanic 6 trial. I'd like to incorporate existing my media (already on my drive storage) into a thumbnail set in PM in such a way that the thumbnail can be separately viewed and accessed, in addition to using PM as an ingest tool for new media added to certain RAW media folders. What is the best way to get started?

My questions, so far:

• What step by step method shall I establish my media thumbnail?
• Can the thumbnail set stay resident to my machine (small enough to travel)? My media folders are on an external drive (2.5TB RAID) attached to my MacBook Pro. They are in a specific order that I wish to maintain regardless of thumbnails.
• Should I make a thumbnail set common to all folders or keep the same division as the media files (by my categories)?

Regards,

Henry

[Kirk Baker]

Henry,

Just started using Photo Mechanic 6 trial. I'd like to incorporate existing my media (already on my drive storage) into a thumbnail set in PM in such a way that the thumbnail can be separately viewed and accessed, in addition to using PM as an ingest tool for new media added to certain RAW media folders. What is the best way to get started?

My questions, so far:

• What step by step method shall I establish my media thumbnail?
• Can the thumbnail set stay resident to my machine (small enough to travel)? My media folders are on an external drive (2.5TB RAID) attached to my MacBook Pro. They are in a specific order that I wish to maintain regardless of thumbnails.
• Should I make a thumbnail set common to all folders or keep the same division as the media files (by my categories)?

Photo Mechanic has no facility for making thumbnail sets.

-Kirk

[/list]

[Henry-In-Florida]

Thank you, Kirk. Guess i'll just reopen the favorites each time. Can I save a contact sheet created from the media? So there's no facility to create contact sheet that is browsable for any purpose?

[Kirk Baker]

Thank you, Kirk. Guess i'll just reopen the favorites each time. Can I save a contact sheet created from the media? So there's no facility to create contact sheet that is browsable for any purpose?

Photo Mechanic is a photo browser.  It shows you what the folders on your disks currently contain.  It does not offer an ability to make a virtual copy of your disks for offline browsing.

-Kirk

[Hayo Baan]

It does not offer an ability to make a virtual copy of your disks for offline browsing.

What Kirk said is absolutely true. However, with the PM+ catalog, you can achieve something similar; when the image files themselves are unavailable, their image proxy (reduced resolution) is still available for browsing (only). You won't be able to edit e.g. the metadata though. But I thinks this is close enough to “virtual copies” to still be quite useful.