- Ingest (what they call importing) photos into PM using multiple card readers at the same time. I usually download 2 cards at a time into the program.
- No waiting time for previews to render. I have PM set up so it writes color coding & stars to XMP so LR reads it. After the cards are downloaded I just hit the arrow keys and #1 or #2 on my keypad to cull images. Can go through a wedding in 10-15 mins or so.
- Import images into LR. I've got a pretty fast machine but culling through PM is way faster than LR.
Photo mechanic has changed my life, especially with size of files out of the d800. I ingest all the files and can immediately start reviewing the images (while the others are loaded). In lightroom, I couldn't do that and it would take forever to see the sharpness of the photo. There is very little delay in photo mechanic. View, zoom, select. Saves me SOOO much time. Can cull in half the time now.
- Ingest (what they call importing) photos into PM using multiple card readers at the same time. I usually download 2 cards at a time into the program.
- No waiting time for previews to render. I have PM set up so it writes color coding & stars to XMP so LR reads it. After the cards are downloaded I just hit the arrow keys and #1 or #2 on my keypad to cull images. Can go through a wedding in 10-15 mins or so.
- Import images into LR. I've got a pretty fast machine but culling through PM is way faster than LR....Show more →
If you're a Canon shooter, their free software does just about everything PM can do; and just as fast. However, you have to ask yourself if you need ratings or cropping to follow over to LR. That's about the only thing that you can't do. If you don't need that, Canon's utilities get the job done just fine. I don't know too many people that do any actual editing in PM. Thus, I don't see the need for the extra spending, personally.
I use the sort of similar faststone image viewer which is free. Basically for instant previews, you can do your initial culling very fast without waiting for previews to render from the RAWs.
Mark_L wrote:
I use the sort of similar faststone image viewer which is free. Basically for instant previews, you can do your initial culling very fast without waiting for previews to render from the RAWs.
+1 same here. I've tried PM a few times over the years because of all the forum discussions. In the end I think Fastone Image Viewer is just as good. I haven't found anything in PM that I would use over Fastone Image Viewer.
I've tried Photomechanic... I really don't see it's benefits over just using lightroom. I'm using an i7 machine overclocked to 4.2ghz, and lightroom isn't really that much slower than photomechanic. My raw files are from a 5d3
Basically it's a really fast way of sorting through images. And you can kind of look at it as a filter. Throw out all the crap shots right off the bat and import only the keepers into lightroom.
For photojournalist's and photo editors; Photomechanic provides the quickest method for typing captions into metadata than any other application available and it can also be used to transmit your photos via a built in FTP client.
I tried it. But in the end, for me, I found little benifit.
When I get home from a wedding my images are already backed up to a hyperdrive. So, I just hook that up to my computer and let Lightroon ingest all the files and create previews while I'm sleeping. Keywording and copyright is all done. The next day I can cull very quickly using the arrow kets and Lightrooms cull/pick/rating controls. The first thing I do is cull by individual camera. Then when that's done I sync all the times in LR and do a final pass showing all cameras. It takes me about an hour to go from 200 images to 6-700.
This is what works for me. Other have different workflows, of course.
cordellwillis wrote:
+1 same here. I've tried PM a few times over the years because of all the forum discussions. In the end I think Fastone Image Viewer is just as good. I haven't found anything in PM that I would use over Fastone Image Viewer.
On the FastStone site, it says their image viewer was last updated on 2011-06-29. Will it work with raw files from newer cameras?
