Low resolution preview images and zooming

[vishpateluk]

Hello
I signed up to the trial today and am keen to give the application a run over as the Black Friday promotion is on. Whenever I shoot the first thing I do is review the images. As part of my culling process I zoom in to make sure the eye is in focus. Usually I will open the images in Adobe Bridge and then zoom in, then rate images that are in focus and cull those which are not.

In Photo Mechanic I can see that the pictures load much faster however when I zoom in the preview pane the photo is blurry. I did google this and came across this article - http://forums.camerabits.com/index.php?topic=10593.0

This refers to a preview option but I can't see anything that relates to my Sony raw files. I have included a screenshot to demonstrate the issue, the left screen is the image in Adobe Bridge zoomed in and you can see the eye is in focus however the image on the right is the preview in Photo Mechanic and this is blurry.

I'm running Windows 10 x64 with 32GB RAM, 1TB NVME and a Nvidia 1080 Ti
The Photo Mechanic version is 6.0 build 3954
I shoot with a Sony A7III

Thanks in advance.

[Kirk Baker]

Hello
I signed up to the trial today and am keen to give the application a run over as the Black Friday promotion is on. Whenever I shoot the first thing I do is review the images. As part of my culling process I zoom in to make sure the eye is in focus. Usually I will open the images in Adobe Bridge and then zoom in, then rate images that are in focus and cull those which are not.

In Photo Mechanic I can see that the pictures load much faster however when I zoom in the preview pane the photo is blurry. I did google this and came across this article - http://forums.camerabits.com/index.php?topic=10593.0

This refers to a preview option but I can't see anything that relates to my Sony raw files. I have included a screenshot to demonstrate the issue, the left screen is the image in Adobe Bridge zoomed in and you can see the eye is in focus however the image on the right is the preview in Photo Mechanic and this is blurry.

I'm running Windows 10 x64 with 32GB RAM, 1TB NVME and a Nvidia 1080 Ti
The Photo Mechanic version is 6.0 build 3954
I shoot with a Sony A7III

Photo Mechanic does not have a built-in facility for rendering RAW files.  Sony RAW files contain only a small preview, thus the low quality when zooming.

-Kirk

[vishpateluk]

Hello Kirk
Thanks for the speedy reply and what a shame. I guess that's why I couldn't find any videos or articles about it. I guess I'll have to stick with Adobe Bridge.
Much appreciated.

[Mick O (Camera Bits)]

Note that you do have a few options to see full-size previews when zooming in to check focus during culling with Sony files.  One is to shoot RAW+JPG -- Photo Mechanic combines them into a single thumbnail and zooming in to check focus works great in this case.  Then when it is time to take them into post-processing you can ditch the JPGs pretty much automatically by telling PM to only send RAWs to your pixel-editing program.

Another option is to convert to DNG files with fullsize previews. Depending on your workflow, this is either unbearable time added, or a simple extra step. (PM can call Adobe DNG Converter from it's own Tools menu)

Hope some find this helpful.

-Mick

[vishpateluk]

Hi Mick
Thanks for coming back to me. I still have the trial for a little while and albeit the offer is over I'm still keen to improve my culling process, so if this works I'd still be interested in buying Photo Mechanic. I usually don't shoot RAW+JPEG however as my camera has dual card slots and I have both 64gb and 128gb cards space really isn't an issue so this is something I'm happy to test.

[vishpateluk]

Hello
Just wanted to confirm I tested shooting with RAW+JPEG on my Sony A7III and now the previews show in high resolution so I can now quickly review images and see pin sharp details. The increase in performance versus bridge is so much better and this definitely will save me some time.

@MickO - You mentioned about you can tell PM to only send RAWs to my editing program, where would this be configured? I use Lightroom, Capture One and Photoshop CC, however I use them different things so in this case would want the images to open in Photoshop CC.

[Mick O (Camera Bits)]

@vishpateluk In Preferences > Launching there is a setting for what type of file to edit when looking at RAW+Jpgs. (These are Mac screenshots, but should still work on your Windows machine)



On that same Settings pane, I also want to point out a feature that is somewhat hidden. You may or may not have come across this already, but since you use multiple editing softwares, as I do, you may appreciate this.

Under "Assign specific editing applications for each file type" there is dialog with a long list of filetypes, but at the end of the list are slots for "Custom editors"   You can add different editors to these slots. Here is an example of settings



And then in the context (right-click) menu you can choose from those custom editors. Perhaps this would be useful in some scenarios.