The team at Camera Bits is happy to announce the long-awaited “Universal-Binary” build of Photo Mechanic and Photo Mechanic Plus for macOS is now available for testing as a release candidate. This is the rewritten build of Photo Mechanic that is so-called “Apple Silicon native” and does not require emulation to run on the speedy M1, M2, M3, etc. family of processors in newer Apple computers.
Requirements
This Release Candidate build is available to everyone. If you have a current subscription license for Photo Mechanic or Photo Mechanic Plus or a perpetual license purchased after 11 March 2024, it will work on any computer where you have activated your license. The same is true for anyone who starts the 14-day free trial.
If you would prefer to not sign up for the trial, but would like to try the Release Candidate, you can activate either of the following license keys:
For Photo Mechanic features: ZQBD-C799-MK2Y-AGPM
For Photo Mechanic Plus features: PE9L-2AQB-VEMP-AYPM
The Release Candidate build requires macOS 13 Ventura or newer. While it is now Apple-silicon native, it will also run on Intel-based Macs.
The Release Candidate build will expire, i.e. stop running, on October 31, 2024.
This project has taken significant work for Camera Bits developers, as it was not simply a matter of recompiling source code for the newer processors. Large sections of code had to be rewritten from the ground up and meticulously tested to make sure they matched the high standards of the current Photo Mechanic program. We were able to make some meaningful performance optimizations along the way and will continue to look for opportunities for further optimization. Part of this work included integrating the built-in Raw rendering of Apple's ImageIO.
You can add feedback or comments to this post or via normal customer support channels listed here:
https://docs.camerabits.com/support/tickets/newUpdates/Changes:
• Added: Render Cache RAW preference options:
1) Always render RAW
2) Render RAW on demand
3) Only render RAW when embedded preview is small
Options 1 and 2 will allow you to toggle the RAW render/preview render on an image-by-image basis. For option 1, this allows you to see the embedded preview after having seen the RAW rendered image. For option 2 this allows you to force the RAW to be rendered and see the result. For option 1 and 2, the RAW quality can be toggled as much as you like.
Be sure to get the latest Adobe DNG Converter as it appears to have been updated to render RAW images much faster than it used to. It is fast enough to beat the Apple ImageIO renderer (which is Apple Silicon-tuned and uses the GPU) on some RAW image types. Try them both out and see what you think.
• Added: Uploader templates now have a local Metadata Template that is capable of being set per template or snapshot. Now you can be sure that when you choose a snapshot for a template that the local Metadata Template settings you’ll apply to your uploaded photos is correct.
• Added: Photo Mechanic now sets Mime-Type on S3 uploads.
• Added: Metadata dialogs now maintain a list of recent items in the popup menus on the right side of most metadata fields. This feature was previously only present in the Plus edition and is now present in the Standard edition.
• Added: PLUS Other Constraints field, useful with the PLUS Data Mining field.
• Fixed: Video thumbnails have wrong colors on macOS Sequoia.
• Fixed: Option-drag and drop from contact sheet to Finder folder does not copy.
• Fixed: Ingest stalling when ingesting from camera cards.
• Fixed: Disk Caching issue where cached file names were indeterminate.
• Fixed: Force check for license online when local license has expired. This should address the issue of some users having to re-enter their license keys when subscription payment has been made recently.
• Fixed: PLUS Data Mining field not appearing in Customize when already customized.
• Fixed: PLUS Data Mining menu missing item “Prohibited except for search engine indexing”.
• Fixed: PLUS Data Mining field not applied with Metadata Template when its apply checkbox is set.
• Fixed: Made selected set in Preview as similar as possible between the two platforms (macOS and Windows). The macOS version can now add and dismiss images to/from the selected set while single selection synchronization is active in the Preview preferences.
• Fixed: Option-drag and drop from contact sheet to Finder folder does not copy.
Download the Universal Binary Release Candidate here:
https://www.camerabits.com/download/PhotoMechanicR8153_c8aefba5.dmg
