A workshop customer of mine has this software last week. It look interesting for editing. I use PS & LR.
Do I 1) need it and 2) Pro's & Cons from any of you folks who use it.
According to their website, this software is just an organizer with a few extras, and an expensive one at that.
Doesn't Lightroom have these same capabilities?
It's primarily for keywording and making selects. I'm not aware of it having any editing features, but I haven't used it in a few years. I used to use it before Aperture/Lightroom. It was designed to meet the needs of sports/photojournalist types. It might still have a speed advantage if you are on a deadline and need to get images to your editor asap. Otherwise you should be fine with Lightroom.
Photo Mechanic is a fab tool but like many software tools - it's target user audience is pretty specific.
You'll find it's core supporters are Photo-journalists (a large part of the pro work I do). It has a very rapid thumbnail browser (very much faster than Lightroom or Bridge) and has a host of very fast, efficient and useful tools (far too many to detail here). However, just briefly, I use it this way.
I download all the images from a shoot. I can view them in the browser, tag those I'm interested in, caption them (using pre written 'stationery' as they call it if required to populate all the relevant IPTC fields), crop, correct and transmit via email or FTP all from within the program (you don't have to start up a separate email or FTP program to do this).
If I have the luxury of time, after the tagging part, I'll use PM to copy the files to another folder where I will use Photoshop for the cropping and editing.
To summarise therefore, Photo Mechanic's 'metier' is not as a replacement for any of the well known image editing software but is mainly a tool (in my view) for the rapid management of image files for Photo Journalism
Hope this helps (as I say, only my opinion though)
Discussion
4 repliesDo I 1) need it and 2) Pro's & Cons from any of you folks who use it.
Thanks as always,
Jack
Doesn't Lightroom have these same capabilities?
JG
Photo Mechanic is a fab tool but like many software tools - it's target user audience is pretty specific.
You'll find it's core supporters are Photo-journalists (a large part of the pro work I do). It has a very rapid thumbnail browser (very much faster than Lightroom or Bridge) and has a host of very fast, efficient and useful tools (far too many to detail here). However, just briefly, I use it this way.
I download all the images from a shoot. I can view them in the browser, tag those I'm interested in, caption them (using pre written 'stationery' as they call it if required to populate all the relevant IPTC fields), crop, correct and transmit via email or FTP all from within the program (you don't have to start up a separate email or FTP program to do this).
If I have the luxury of time, after the tagging part, I'll use PM to copy the files to another folder where I will use Photoshop for the cropping and editing.
To summarise therefore, Photo Mechanic's 'metier' is not as a replacement for any of the well known image editing software but is mainly a tool (in my view) for the rapid management of image files for Photo Journalism
Hope this helps (as I say, only my opinion though)
Barrie