Any word on Photo Mechanic 7

[mistd]

Hopefully the Photo Mechanic 7 will be Apple Silicon native with optimized performance (few times PM felt sluggish compared to other software).

Also, please, do something about the GUI / interface. It feels really ancient. From the rounded buttons with gradients and that "candy" feel to the pop-up dialogs and text fields, everything feels "old school". Please, bring this powerful piece of software up to date in terms of interface. It really needs some great UI/UX design overhaul.

What I mean is ... just take a look at your docs site (https://docs.camerabits.com/) ... OMG    At least it's consistent with the software

Don't want to sound too harsh, hope you guys don't get upset. 
I really love the software, it is powerful but please ... pour some love into the design.

[Bob M]

Hopefully you continue to focus on functionality and don't pay too much attention to posts like the above.

[Pavel]

completely agree withBob M.  Please don't make changes. to keep up with fads in the UI department.  Change for changes sake is the bane of many software packages.  They just keep moving things around so the kiddos can say "Cool, man" to this weeks eye candy.
When it works, as well as it works in PM - don't move the cheese. 

[Max Lemesh]

I'm happy with the current look, however I'd love to be able to
- customise panels and interface similar to Capture One
- set custom shortcuts or change existing ones to any function in PM.

Reloading Code Replacements takes 4 keys, come on, Let me do it in just one key )
Let me not only select by color class or stars with shortcuts but also filter photos using shortcuts.

[dbvirago]

I'd like to see easier and faster ability to compare multiple shots. That part of the interface is a bit clunky. I usually end up using FastStone for first pass culling due to faster and easier comparing of images.

[Kirk Baker]

I'd like to see easier and faster ability to compare multiple shots. That part of the interface is a bit clunky. I usually end up using FastStone for first pass culling due to faster and easier comparing of images.

Can you describe what it is that you're looking for?  Without some descriptive direction, I could make changes and you might like it even less.

-Kirk

[Max Lemesh]

There are quite a few apps that you could use for culling and working with images, some of them have features that are implemented better than PM, but overall PM is still a winner in my eyes. My biggest wish is camerabits adopt all the best practices from other apps, while keeping everything that still makes PM the best app overall. Which isn’t hard since most of the things are little fixes here and there, custom shortcuts for any feature, some ui improvements.

For example, I like the way you can set up custom apps and relative shortcuts for launching each one in Fast Raw Viewer. You can even choose the name displayed and order of the apps. The way to do it in PM at the moment is very hard and no one would know how to do it unless you look for specific tutorial on this. But I don’t like using fast raw viewer much, except to look at Sony raw files sometimes, due to their embedded jpegs being only 1600px

[Stenis]

I think it would be fantastic i PhotoMechnic could develop inte a more general DAM. With that I mean that it should be possible to tie XMP data to virtually any type of data files. For me it would be fine if it could index content of PDF or Office-documents but it´s not a must.

The reason to this proposal is that many photographers manage their own business and handles all sorts of info today - not just images or video. This has also been a common way for quite a few DAM-companies that that have emerged from the newspaper - publishing - photo world, to get a wider user base and more healthy business, when for example a lot of the papers have gone out of business. PhotoMechanic already has a lot in place for a move like that. It can already handle both different sets of maintenance forms and many different parallell catalogs. What it lacks though is a possibility to handle XMP-data tied to other file types than images and video.

If that would happen a photographer would be able to handle all the documents and images, he or she would need in one single application and make them searchable. Since PhotoMechanic already is used as a front-end together with some enterprise DAM-systems handling images, it would extend the usability when people want to use it even for other document types and other types of schemas. Remember that XMP sands for Extensible Markup Platform so with that in mind it will also call for to be "extensible" in a real sense of been able to customize IPTC/XMP-schemas, which means being able to add your own "fields/elements".

I think this could be a tremendous boost of usability for PhotoMechnic-users and it would make PhotoMechanic even more relevant in a much broader perspective than just for images and open up for use in a lot of other contexts. Camerabits would get a chance to expand into completely new markets that have been closed for them until then. They could diversify PM by offering a general version and one like now dedicated for photos. I have seen a transition like that with the Norwegian DAM FotoWare. In the first decade of the 2000 it was just able to handle images and video with an add-in but after adapting it after the needs of the City Museum of Stockholm it now can handle all sorts of files including RAW, JPEG, DNG, TIFF and Office-files and other type of text files like PDF -files. It also indexes the content of the PDF-files which makes searches even more powerful than the possibilities the XMP itself normally offers.

As you can see in this example from the City Museum "Digitala Stadsmuseet" is able to handle both images and documents and museums publications - everything searchable in one single interface:

Here a few examples: (click the tabs)

A search that hits all types of material the museum handles: (It displays all sorts of documents and historical images over the very center of Stockholm - Hötorget)
https://digitalastadsmuseet.stockholm.se/fotoweb/archives/5000-Alla-fotografier/?q=H%C3%B6torget

My point is: despite I´m not The City of Stockholm but just a user of PhotoMechanic with a need to handle my 70 000 images, I could also have a lot of use for a system that could handle all sorts of material instead of just images.

[krakouer]

I think that it could move towards more of a DAM, would be a wider market for CameraBits too. Th current Catalog system is great, but a bit clunky in use.

[bildbaendiger]

An improvement to the catalog management would be great:

- the long desired offline editing of the metadata
- the handling of copying / moving catalogs to another drive (there is still a missmatch / problem with the proxy storage location)
- the improvement of simultaneous editing of several catalogs

There is no need to change the UI. It is functional and sufficient. Some window bugs (especially in Windows) should be fixed.

Thomas

[fgphoto]

As far as needed improvements, on that runs natively on Apple Silicon chips is a must. There are all sorts of odd slowdowns with v6 with the M1, M2's etc. The most annoying issue is that if you move a contact sheet to a secondary monitor, it slows to a crawl and is almost unusable. I am also running into regular issues where in the process of trying to do an edit, it will slow down suddenly and take a second or more to jump to the next image (on the primary screen, not on the 2nd display). These problems started when I made the switch from the 27" imac and 15" Macbook pro to the Mac Studio (fully loaded M1 Max version) and 16" MBP (also fully loaded M1 Max). I have now been using the M1's for about the last two years and I am not seeing similar issues with Capture One, or other apps that have made the jump to be fully optimized for Apple Silicon.

At times it is faster to do an entire edit in Capture One than struggle with slowdowns in Photomechanic. I am using Canon R3's and R5's and I am seeing hangs with raw files from both.

I have also had a couple calls with support and was able to reproduce the issues while screen sharing with them, but there have been no solutions forthcoming.

The second thing that I would like is better integration with Capture One as far as metadata and captions. There seems to be a disconnect when working with C1 after doing an edit in Photomechanic. I am not a coder, so I have no idea where the problem is, but it is frustrating to run into situations where you caption it in one place, but the changes don't stick in the other. It seems like Bridge and other Adobe apps see the caption info created in Capture One, but frequently Photomechanic does not. This could also be a user error thing on my part, but even a short pdf primer on how to integrate the two apps would be awesome since it doesn't seem to work very well natively.

I have been a Photomechanic user since the late 90's and it is definitely a part of my workflow and have been a loyal and happy customer up to the Apple Silicon transition. So I really hope that there is a plan to get it current to work well with the modern Macs... especially with the news that it is going to a subscription model.

[ahoward]

It seems like Bridge and other Adobe apps see the caption info created in Capture One, but frequently Photomechanic does not.

What kind of files are you working with? If this happens "frequently", I understand that to mean that it doesn't always happen. Can you provide a sample file where the caption that you changed in Capture One shows up in Photo Mechanic and another sample file where it doesn't? Have you looked at the previous threads on this forum that discuss capture one? Capture one made a video on setting up the two applications to work together, maybe that will be helpful?

[Max Lemesh]

Would there be a PM7 alpha & beta testing? I’d love to participate

[Stenis]

As far as needed improvements, on that runs natively on Apple Silicon chips is a must. There are all sorts of odd slowdowns with v6 with the M1, M2's etc. The most annoying issue is that if you move a contact sheet to a secondary monitor, it slows to a crawl and is almost unusable. I am also running into regular issues where in the process of trying to do an edit, it will slow down suddenly and take a second or more to jump to the next image (on the primary screen, not on the 2nd display). These problems started when I made the switch from the 27" imac and 15" Macbook pro to the Mac Studio (fully loaded M1 Max version) and 16" MBP (also fully loaded M1 Max). I have now been using the M1's for about the last two years and I am not seeing similar issues with Capture One, or other apps that have made the jump to be fully optimized for Apple Silicon.

At times it is faster to do an entire edit in Capture One than struggle with slowdowns in Photomechanic. I am using Canon R3's and R5's and I am seeing hangs with raw files from both.

I have also had a couple calls with support and was able to reproduce the issues while screen sharing with them, but there have been no solutions forthcoming.

The second thing that I would like is better integration with Capture One as far as metadata and captions. There seems to be a disconnect when working with C1 after doing an edit in Photomechanic. I am not a coder, so I have no idea where the problem is, but it is frustrating to run into situations where you caption it in one place, but the changes don't stick in the other. It seems like Bridge and other Adobe apps see the caption info created in Capture One, but frequently Photomechanic does not. This could also be a user error thing on my part, but even a short pdf primer on how to integrate the two apps would be awesome since it doesn't seem to work very well natively.

I have been a Photomechanic user since the late 90's and it is definitely a part of my workflow and have been a loyal and happy customer up to the Apple Silicon transition. So I really hope that there is a plan to get it current to work well with the modern Macs... especially with the news that it is going to a subscription model.

If you really are interested in a solidly working integration between your RAW-converter and PhotoMechanic, maybe you should try DXO Photolab instead of Capture One. I have used this combo since Photolab 6 Plus hit the market som three years ago. I use PM Plus to maintain about 25 IPTC-elements (many by using PM: s variables) and have configured Photolab to synchronize with external software (just to check a checkbox) and it keeps the two softwares perfectly in synch as soon as data is changed in PM or Photolab and it is almost instant if both applications are open simultaneously. As it isn´t a good DAM-practise to use bidirectional flows in DAM-integrations PM in my case owns the XMP-data. I even use a viewer like XnView in my workflow since it gives such a good metadata overview of all sorts of metadata like EXIF, EXIF Tools overview, IPTC, XMP and GPS-mapping and even XnView works really well in this integration.

It is also possible to configure PM to handle all the files involved in such a flow including the proprietare Photolab -files .DOP. by configuring PM accordingly. This is necessary if files are moved or copied from PM. There is also a very useful function in Photolab that logs and remembers files opened via PM in Photolab called "External Seaches" which makes it very easy to pick up an earlier search within Photolab without the need to go to PM once more.

The image quality in Photolab is maybe the best there is and have many years been superior both to Lightroom and Capture One (especially low light pics) but I seriously tried to migrate from Photolab to Capture One just a month ago but it just didn´t work - I gave up! I was not able to get it to synch with PM. I use Capture One in parallell mostly for tethering and more advanced layer and masking jobs and the reason I wanted to migrate was that I fell Photolab has been too slow improving masking (no AI). The AI-driven masking i the last version of CO is just lovely and CO is also the only one of the three converters I have used that has a consistent user interface for global and local adjustments and a really smart and competent layer-system. So, I do prefer CO to Photolab of those reasons but since metadata is so important for me, I will stick with Photolab in the foreseeable future.

It is difficult to get it all and there is always compromises to make but if integration between your RAW-converter and PhotoMechanic is a main concern, I don´t think there is anything today that beats the integration between PM Plus and Photolab.