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Photo Mechanic 6 out the end of March


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I am sure I nowhere near the only one using - nay dependent on - PhotoMechanic.  

Just seen that they have version 6 coming out the end of March which is great news - https://www.camerabits.com/about-us/coming-soon/

 

And for anyone who has not discovered it yet I cannot recommend it highly enough - it slices my work time at least in half and makes it so much easier to cull and arrange stuff, - it is already set to work properly with Lightroom and just streamlines everything.

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Good news. It was originally promised before the end of 2018. Once released I'll have to monitor the Camera Bits forum. Ver 5 latest release is working well for me, and it's likely I won't need Ver 6 until I eventually use Mac os Mojave's replacement that will require 64 bit apps. Plenty of time for any potential bugs to be ironed out.

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According to previous discussion on the Camera Bits forums it should have DAM cataloguing capability, so a major update, although it is not mentioned on the preview page.

 

I too am a long time PM user but will probably wait until first maintenance release of 6, CB are pretty good at releasing fixes etc. Like others I do not have a pressing need to change.

 

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I think it says something for the quality of their software that people do not feel a need for an instant upgrade - I also like the fact that they do take their time with major updates, and seem to want to get them right rather than fast.  I have no urgent need either its just great to see them looking forward.

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36 minutes ago, Starsphinx said:

I think it says something for the quality of their software that people do not feel a need for an instant upgrade - I also like the fact that they do take their time with major updates, and seem to want to get them right rather than fast.  I have no urgent need either its just great to see them looking forward.

 

I agree. CameraBits support has, for me at least, been very good. When I got a new laptop with a high resolution screen the dialogue boxes etc were way too small. An email to support and they sent me an unreleased build with the necessary fixes to tide me over until it was included in a production release.

 

Photomechanic has always been one of those wonderful, and rare, pieces of software that is highly focussed on its purpose and just does what it needs to. CB do not do bloatware that adds new functionality just because the developers could. As a former software developer (and manager of same) I really appreciate that arrow-like focus on real user need and avoidance of marginal functionality just for sake of having a longer feature list.

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  • 3 weeks later...
16 hours ago, Colblimp said:

I've just installed PM and am trying it for 30 days to decide whether I buy it or not and I just don't get it.  How on earth does one edit?  Exporting pics?  Etc...

It is not an editor - it s a management tool.  You set what program you want to use to edit photos and/or videos in preferences.  It works properly with LR and already has settings available.

I use it for importing - it is way faster than Lightroom.  Say at a football match I have taken 800 photos, maybe a quarter of which will be worth a second look.  I "ingest using photo mechanic then go through the images hitting T to tag ones I am interested in.  I then select only the tagged ones and drag to LR and LR then only imports the images I am interested in - I can delete the 3/4 of the shoot I do not need without having to import the whole lot into LR - and I can use minimal import settings for LR because photo mechanic has already created thumbnails.  Then I go through edit, rate, colour code, pick as normal in LR before exporting what I need.  

Its real benefits are with the stationary - all images I import are automatically labelled with my name copyright and contact in the data fields - I can add more to each shoot.  It has "variables" which are preprogrammed shortcode so I can put {imn3}-{idy0}-{iyr4} for naming and it will put out month-day number- year - I use this for folders and add a location or even after the code making it easy to sort and see what I was doing.  Even better you can program any number of your own codes - so I can set it up for each team that if I input a number a name is added to the caption then I just type in "6 heads the ball" and it outputs "Sotiris Papagiannopoulos heads the ball" (no idea who that is by the way or if he wears a number 6 its just an example) which can save a huge amount of time.  I have different prefilled stationary for different tasks - like I have an Alamy live news sheet which tells me what I have to fill in where in the right format - I just apply to live news photos fill in the blanks and its done.

The only thing I do have to watch is if I use it to move or rename files they will disconnect in LR - but that is the case however you move or rename files outside LR.

I do not get close to its full functionality - but without it would take longer to sort and arrange stuff.

 

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