Graham,
I am running Photo Mechanic version 4.6.5 on a Vista Intel machine.
I am a new user to PM and was specifically attracted to it for the code replacement features. I have got simple lists working and am happy with that, but I see more possibilities so here goes,
My current work flow for equestrian sports,
1. Capture image and note down the competitor number on a pad.
2. One of my team collects card and notes and downloads and add competitor number to file name using ACDee, example file name G4SU1234{123 where "{123" is added and the number is the competitor and the "{" is the separator.
3. We then search under competitor number in ACDSee using the "{123" as the search element of the file name.
4.Back in the office I resize all the images and upload to my website provider where his software sees the "{" separator and uses the characters after that as the search for that batch of files in a dropdown menu, in other words not a true search but a display of the competitor numbers to select from.
So far so good....
My first use of PM will be to substitute the file name for the competitor details using code replacement in the office for the web upload. I use the competitor number as the code.
Can I automate this? Could PM "see" the { character in the file name look up the details and add them to the file name after the { ?
Also do you have any comments about the use of PM having seen by present workflow?
I'm not sure by your description what you're really trying to accomplish, but I can tell you that '{' is used to surround 'variables' in Photo Mechanic and for that reason you may have problems with your current strategy.
Simply stated, Code Replacement looks for 'codes' between your chosen delimiter characters and if it finds a code in the list of codes, inserts the 'replacement text' in place of the code and delimiter characters. More complexly, one can use {variables} along with Code Replacement to do some truly powerful operations including double or even triple (actually up to 100) lookups through replacements and {variables}.
If you were to put the competitor number inside some unused field like Edit Status (without any extraneous other characters like '{') then you could use the {status} variable inside your Code Replacement delimiters to expand to whatever text you want to be replaced. And if you use extended syntax, ( /code#n/ where 'n' is a digit representing the specific replacement index ) you can have multiple replacements per competitor. You just have to create a Code Replacement text file that maps a single code to multiple replacements, like so:
code [tab] replacement1 [tab] replacement2 [tab] ...
(Note: there should not be any spaces between the tabs, I just put them there to make it easier to read.)
Then once you've put the competitor number in the Edit Status field, you could then fill out an IPTC Stationery Pad like so:
Caption: [append checkbox '+' set]
/{status}#2/
Keywords: [append checkbox '+' set]
/{status#3}/
Then you would apply the IPTC Stationery Pad to your selected photos and they would be automatically captioned and keyworded with the notes you took earlier from your cards.
HTH,
-Kirk
