Just to beat a dead horse a bit more, I thought I would offer a suggestion to the people reading this thread.
I use two monitors on my main PC for sorting images. What I have found for putting IPTC data in is to first set PM to have the LARGEST thumbnails in the contact sheet window. On my monitor, it is usually two thumbnails side-by-side at the largest setting (YMMV). Then, I do a "I" to open the IPTC dialog on the first image and drag the IPTC dialog box to the second monitor.
As I move throught PM using the ALT+[ or ALT+] shortcut keys, I see that the contact sheet moves along with me to display the image currently in the IPTC dialog. More accurately, it shows the ROW of thumbnails (2 in my case) containting the image in the IPTC dialog display. It is not highlighted and if I close the IPTC dialog, it goes back to the first image (or whichever one was highlighted when I clicked "I"). All I do now is to memorize the image number before I close the IPTC dialog and then manually move to that image.
I found that this technique lets me code more like 90-95% of the images without having to leave the IPTC dialog and then zoom in to read a bib number.
I would love the ability to zoom in from the IPTC dialog preview, but will settle for the ability for the highlighted contact sheet image to follow along with what is being viewed in the IPTC dialog. That way, when I do need to zoom in, I don't have to remember which image I stopped with in the IPTC preview.
Thanks.
-Mike
Fairfield Photography, LLC