Earlier today I ran into an issue where although I was hitting the button it wouldn’t tag the files but would advance to the next image. I have been using Photo Mechanic to tag all of my pictures for the last couple of weeks but not all was well.
I found a good tutorial here which also has 2 links to sites at the bottom of the article for other sites where you can get team rosters automatically for several pro teams and leagues.
It allows you to type a small code For example a team color and number, b10 (blue 10), and have the software replace all instances of that in captions and other XMP data with a name that is a text file. A feature that I had heard about is called code replacement and is used by sports photographers. Not only can it keyword and change metadata on your images but it can be used to rename files and do more. I know that Photo Mechanic can do a lot more than what I am currently using it for.
I purchased the full version when Camera Bits put it on sale for 20% off a a few days later. I used the trial version for a few days and was sold on it for sorting my files. It is not all that slow, but waiting 2 to 5 seconds for the full display when switching between images especially with large files was a little of a slow down to my workflow. I love using Lightroom but when I am going through files for selections it has always driven me a little crazy with waiting for the standard previews to load when switching images. I did a few more folders that I had already imported into Lightroom and I was very impressed with how fast Photo Mechanic was at displaying the files. I buttons to rate stars and added controls for back and next on my Intuos Medium tablet.
I chose not to use the color scheme for selecting that is the default for Photo Mechanic because I used the star ratings (1 to 5) more in Lightroom. I turned this on in Lightroom, synchronized the folder (metadata changes) and my ratings were there. It is something that is turned on in most of my catalogues, I just forgot to do it with this one. This has both programs write the settings and the ratings to a small xmp sidecar file for each photo and allows for the two programs (as well as others) to work together. Which is a setting that I believe should be turned on by default in Lightroom.
I set Photo Mechanic up to write Raw ratings to XMP sidecar files (preferences, under files tab, always update XMP when changing color ratings) then I had to go into Lightroom and check the Automatically write changes to XMP (Windows > Edit Menu > Catalogue Settings, Metadata tab). The card contained all Canon Raw files so after I went through everything, I opened the Lightroom catalogue (I use several) I was going to import the photos to, imported the photos (in place import), then went to check my ratings… They weren’t there! I dug around a little further saw that I got caught by a simple little thing from the Photo Mechanic help files. Next I opened the folder with Photo Mechanic as a contact sheet and started to rate the images in there using my tablet.
Instead of doing a Lightroom import like I usually would have done, I used the ingest feature from Photo Mechanic to put the images in the folder tree that I normally would have with Lightroom. I had a card I had to move the images from onto my computer. I was intrigued and the next day downloaded the trial version of Photo Mechanic and set up my tablet the almost the same way.
Starting at about the 15 minute mark, RC Conception basically went through a very quick rundown of Photo Mechanic as well as giving tips on how to set up a Wacom Intuos tablet to help with one click sorting.
I really thought, why do I need this?Ī little while ago I was catching up on some photography podcasts and in particular this episode of Photography Tips and Trips from KelbyOne. I knew that sports photographers relied on it heavily and I had an idea that it was great for sorting pictures and adding metadata to photos. I had heard about Camera Bits Photo Mechanic software for a long time (in fact I downloaded a trial version in November 2012 but never installed it) so it wasn’t really new to me. At that time I said to myself why had I waited so long to try the software.
If I remember correctly, the last time this really happened was back at the end of 2007 when I tried Adobe Lightroom 1 for the first time and within an hour of playing with the trial I purchased it. It’s not very often that a piece of software comes along that makes me change my photographic workflow.