Photo Mechanic

Infobox Software
name = Photo Mechanic



caption =
developer = [http://www.camerabits.com/site/about.html Camera Bits, Inc]
latest_release_version = [http://www.camerabits.com/site/PM4History4.5.3.1.html 4.5.3.1]
latest_release_date = 2008-02-29
latest_preview_version =
latest_preview_date =
operating_system = Mac OS X, Windows
platform =
genre = image browser
license =
website = [http://www.camerabits.com www.camerabits.com]

Photo Mechanic is a front-end photo browsing tool by Portland, Oregon-based company Camera Bits. Retailing at approximately $150, it is targeted for the professional photographer market.

While Photo Mechanic has basic support for trivial image edits, such as crops, it is meant to be used in concert with a dedicated photo editing program, such as Adobe Photoshop, and a back-end cataloging tool, such as iView Media Pro or Extensis Portfolio. The main goal of Photo Mechanic is to allow the photographer to quickly accomplish the initial capture of photos from his or her camera, to categorize photos into winners and losers, and to quickly and easily tag each photo with IPTC Information Interchange Model metadata.

oftware features

Browsing

Photo Mechanic is designed to support fast photo browsing and full color management. It is widely accepted among certain types of professional photographers as being the fastest tool for browsing and sorting files.ref|luminous

Categorizing

Photo Mechanic lets the photographer apply a "tag", "color class", or "star rating" to each photo with a single keystroke. This can be used later to filter photos by quality or classification.

Metadata Tagging

Photo Mechanic uses the concept of "IPTC Stationery." The user sets up a piece of "stationery" with the tags common to a group of photos, and can then apply them to any arbitrary set of photos. Many browsers and catalog tools allow users to apply metadata to photos; Photo Mechanic is distinguished by two attributes. First, the user interface is designed to make applying tags to large numbers of photos at once very easy. Secondly, Photo Mechanic can write IPTC metadata to an extremely large number of file formats. This includes proprietary formats such as Canon CR2 or Nikon NEF. Other keywording solutions typically cannot write keywords directly to the RAW file, but instead create a "sidecar" XMP file. Photo Mechanic actually embeds the keywords in the RAW file itself. If preferred, Photo Mechanic can also create and maintain sidecar files in addition to embedding IPTC and XMP into photos.

References

[http://www.luminous-landscape.com/reviews/software/asset-management.shtml Luminous Landscape review of Photo Mechanic] - "More than anything else PM is the world champion for speed when it comes to viewing and sorting files, including virtually every type of raw file....There is almost a cult following of PM among photojournalists and stock photographers."
[http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/imagedatabases/photomechanic.html ControlledVocabulary review of Photo Mechanic] - "Walk into any newspaper photo department, or look over the shoulder of a photojournalist editing and transmitting images in the field, and Photo Mechanic is what you'll probably see on their screen. It's a workhorse browser / annotation software that photographers use to get their images out of their compact flash cards and on to their computer hard drive or network while adding IPTC metadata to the images as they are transferred, or immediately afterwards."

External links

* [http://www.camerabits.com/pages/PM4.html Photo Mechanic web site]
* [http://www.controlledvocabulary.com/help/cvkc-photomechanic.html ControlledVocabulary web site: how to install, modify and use the Structured Keyword feature in Photo Mechanic]