Photo Mechanic v5 First Impressions

[oryk]

Another agreement and wish to be able to customize the stationery pads and other dialog boxes. Light on dark is very hard to work with for text (though it's good for images). That's one of the problems with doing any kind of metadata work in Lightroom (that and the tiny boxes).
The overall look is nice, and my favorite new thing so far is being able to keep the detail/enlarged view up in my second monitor, but please give some more thought to the UI of the text boxes. Thanks.

I agree with Major Tom

[jimb]

John,
You cannot change the colors on the text dialogs, e.g., the IPTC dialogs. That's where the problem exists.

[Kirk Baker]

Thank you all for both the positive and negative feedback.  We'll see what we can do to address your concerns in the future.  We always are open to suggestions and love to hear from our users, both the good and bad.

-Kirk

[davidgordon]

We'll see what we can do to address your concerns in the future.

"The future" can be a very long way away, I hope you mean it to be within the next couple of weeks. Otherwise, as I said earlier, I'm not renewing my licence and not using PM.

[olidie]

I am also prefering a lighter color for the programe, since a lot a reading/writing is done in PM. Maybe a light grey like this forum ;-)

Whenever I have to read webpage with white text and dark background it kind of burns into my eyes. Moving on to another, regularly colored webpage I continue to see textrows until my eyes adjusted again. So when using CS6 I switched to the medium grey. And there's way more reading to be done in PM than in PS...

[gerlo]

Just opened PM5. It looks like Wordperfect 4.2 on DOS in the 80's!
Horrible to say the least. I don't want a remake of Lightroom
I like to have a clean working environment. Sometimes I spend hours with this program.
So please make it changeable.

Thanks Gerlo

[Tom Parkes 2]

Is there really no way to be rid of the white text on a dark grey background? I'm using my 17" Macbook Pro at the moment and when the ingest box appeared on start up I nearly quit out there and then. There's no question of me being able to use this as it stands, I simply cannot focus my eyes on the text.

I'm with David Gordon on the iconography. It was always clumsy but the chance to improve it has missed the mark.

Sorry Kirk, I can't work with this.

[mklass]

Add me to the list of those who strongly dislike the new look. It looks like Lightroom, and that is one of the reasons I don't use LR.

Professionals generally value function over form...this look is the reverse. Please change it or add an option to change it before the release.

[chardinej]

John,
You cannot change the colors on the text dialogs, e.g., the IPTC dialogs. That's where the problem exists.

I was just answering your comment here:

"The new interface is ridiculously hard to read and is more of a serious distraction rather than the "professional look" described in the Readme document. The lack of any way to change it is a major omission".

which does not specify the IPTC dialogues but refers to "the new interface", which I took to mean everything.

[Kirk Baker]

Mick,

Add me to the list of those who strongly dislike the new look. It looks like Lightroom, and that is one of the reasons I don't use LR.

Professionals generally value function over form...this look is the reverse. Please change it or add an option to change it before the release.

It is unlikely that there will be enough time to make the look optional.  We will address this after the initial release of PM5.

We hear all of you that dislike the new look.  We also have heard from a great number of people that absolutely love the new look.

The only way to satisfy both groups will be to make an option to have either look, according to preference.  That work could take several weeks to accomplish especially given two platforms to support.  We are not holding back the release of PM 5 in order to undertake the task of implementing a solution.  I may dedicate my upcoming weekends to try and address this concern, but I have no way to guarantee a satisfactory result.

Kind regards,

-Kirk

[ImageGroupLA]

It is very hard to improve on software that I consider perfect from the ground up. 

I understand the desire to change the look, V5 offers new features and functionality is still perfect other than the white text. 

I also understand everyone uses this software for many environments some may use it for selecting images and not for captioning at all, while others will prefer the white text.

I for one am happy to continue to support this software by purchasing the upgrades on all of the 8 seats I currently use but I will continue to use V4 until such a day that the white text hopefully is optional. 

Thanks to everyone at Camera Bits for continuing to build an incredible product.

[Tom Parkes 2]

It is unlikely that there will be enough time to make the look optional.  We will address this after the initial release of PM5.

We hear all of you that dislike the new look.  We also have heard from a great number of people that absolutely love the new look.

The only way to satisfy both groups will be to make an option to have either look, according to preference.  That work could take several weeks to accomplish especially given two platforms to support.  We are not holding back the release of PM 5 in order to undertake the task of implementing a solution.  I may dedicate my upcoming weekends to try and address this concern, but I have no way to guarantee a satisfactory result.

Kind regards,

-Kirk

Looking at this again this morning I notice the light grey text on dark grey is easier on the eye than the white. Would that be an easier option to put in place?

The ideal would be a set of 'looks' as in Photoshop CS6.

I hear you that some people like the look. If I was at home using my 24" Eizo, I'd probably be fine too. But I'm on the road, in PM's native environment, on a laptop and with tired eyes from a day's shooting.


One other thing, in the contact sheet, the first frame of .mov files is sometimes failing to render requiring a mouseover to get it working.

[Tom Priddy]

Add my name to the list of those unable to use the boxes with white text on black backgrounds. It simply does not work when you have to edit captions day in and day out. My eyes can't take it.

As another poster said, if I wanted Lightroom I would have bought Lightroom.

Let us know when you have that fixed.

t.p.

[LM]

Count me as a voice against the lack of choice in UI.

White lettering in dark fields is as much a retrograde step as the !@#$% mirror glossy screens of the latest Apple computers, that make spending time in front of them a health hazard (no choice!).

At least give us a choice please. Apple can afford to ignore their pro users in favour of the large number of consumers. But PM users are largely a pro community and our knowledge is based on hard-won experience and need for function, not looks and fashion.

I appreciate the opportunity to test a beta version and give feedback. I sincerely hope you can hear us. LM

[nharnik]

Hi All,
I too am not too crazy about the new dark interface, especially the captioning/IPTC dialogs. The red underlining is difficult to distinguish from the dark background. I would like to have the option to go white.
As to the preview window, there is a nice option to see shadow OR highlight clipping, but why can't I set the radio buttons to see both highlight and shadow clipping together?
rgds,
N