I also promised to make a basic Photo Mechanic Tutorial that shows you how to use the program to manage your images, even if you don’t have a need for the catalog function.
Photo Mechanic is one of, if not the best photo management system around, and I use it for nearly every single aspect of my regular workflow. I’ve even used it in conjunction with Lightroom, Photoshop, Capture One and Luminar, and I find that it adds increased efficiency to my process. One thing that I love about Photo Mechanic is that it is very easy to add watermarks.
If you’re a new Photo Mechanic user, or if you’re at all curious about the program, you’ll definitely want to check this out. You can watch the lessons here, or find them on on my YouTube Channel.
If you have any questions about Photo Mechanic, feel free to ask or post your questions/comments in the video comment section.
I can’t even begin to describe just how awesome this is, or how excited I am at this news, but in the few brief moments I read the announcement and downloaded the update, my photography life changed instantly. The sun just got a whole lot brighter, and for a short while, I even forgot about the pandemic.
First released in 1998, Photo Mechanic has long been the world’s fastest image browser, and it’s perhaps the best all around photo management program around. Its performance is unparalleled by any other software. With Photo Mechanic, you can browse and scroll through huge folders of images, even RAW files, at blazing speed. We’re talking thousand of photos. Tens of thousands, as fast as you can scroll with the mouse or your trackpad.
And not just that. Photo Mechanic is powerful solution for adding captions, keywords, tagging, staring, rating, copying, saving, moving, assigning GPS coordinates, adjusting capture times, adding watermarks and even uploading to social media.
It handles RAW+JPEG seamlessly and efficiently, and unlike Lightroom, if you’re opening a RAW file in an external editor, like Luminar, Photo Mechanic sends the original file. (Lightroom sends a copy of the file AFTER it’s already demosaiced the file through its own conversion process, which often leads to sharpness issues with Fuji X-TRANS RAW files.)
If there’s one program that I have used more than any other program in my photography life during the past 14+ years, it’s Photo Mechanic. It’s been an absolutely indispensable tool, and the only thing that was missing was a full catalog function, hence the need for Lightroom, but that day has now arrived. (Read my post 4 Reasons Why I’m in Love with Photo Mechanic.)
Photo Mechanic Plus
Camera Bits, the company that makes Photo Mechanic, has been working on this for years, and this month, they released Photo Mechanic Plus, which combines all of the capabilities of the original program with a powerful image database.
Offering the same browsing experience and all of the same tools and features that make Photo Mechanic such a viable component in your photography workflow, Photo Mechanic Plus gives you even more tools to help you manage your digital photography life.
• Comprehensive Search Box
The search tool inside Photo Mechanic Plus allows you to search across multiple drives, even external hard drives and network drives, using simple keyword search to complex searches that cover everything from capture times, exact captions, image dimensions, locations and collections.
• Saved Searches
You can craft advanced search parameters that give you highly detailed results, and then you can save them so that you can find exactly what you want, at any time in the future.
• Filters
A powerful filter tool allows you to browse photos by any parameter you select: date, camera, lens, star and color rating, capture time, and any other metadata you select.
• Collections
Photo Mechanic Plus allows you to combine images from multiple folders or drives into cohesive collections that help you stay organized, or present specific batches of images to your clients.
• Multiple Catalogs
Photo Mechanic Plus allows you keep multiple catalogs, and you can browse or search images from one or more catalogs at the same time. This allows you to keep your photos organized in whatever way you wish, without having to close out and open a new catalog just to preview images from more than one catalog.
A Comprehensive Workflow Tool
In my photography life, Photo Mechanic has always sat at the center of my workflow. It’s what I use to import, caption, keyword, tags, rate, copy, move, save, export and upload my photos every single day. I simply couldn’t imagine life without it.
Even though programs like Lightroom do all of this stuff, Photo Mechanic does it all so much faster and more efficiently. The only problem I had was that it wasn’t a full catalog.
Sure, it will browse any folder you want, and if you set up your image library in an easily identifiable structure, you could theoretically use Photo Mechanic as a catalog, but it was limited. It doesn’t have a very powerful search tool, and you can’t filter your results as easily, or as compressively.
With Photo Mechanic Plus, you now have all of that. Speed, powerful management tools and a fully functional database. Boom. Problems solved.
Performance – In Use
A lot of software has catalog functions, but none of them are as fast or as compressive as Photo Mechanic Plus. Lightroom? Please. A great program, but we all know that it’s got some serious issues. For one thing, it’s very slow to render huge batches of RAW files. In addition, Adobe’s RAW Converter doesn’t handle the Fuji X-TRANS RAW files very well. Oh yea… and you have to buy a subscription or else get the less powerful version that won’t ever be upgraded.
Capture One is an awesome program, but it comes with a steep learning curve. And even though it’s got a catalog option, I’ve always found it to be rather clunky, especially if you have a huge image library. I’ve tried to switch to Capture One numerous times over the years, and I’ve never been able to migrate my entire catalog without numerous freezes, crashes and painfully slow browsing.
I’m a huge fan of Luminar, and was excited to see them include a catalog function with Luminar 4. However, as smart as the Skylum engineers are, they’re starting from scratch. They’ll never catch up with Photo Mechanic, which has had a 22-year head start.
I just spent the last weekend uploading nearly 180,000 images across many folders and subfolders into my brand new Photo Mechanic Plus catalog, and I didn’t have a single crash. Not one problem, not one hiccup, not one freeze, not one issue of any kind.
The entire process went seamlessly. The program tore through through folders, images and metadata with ridiculous efficiency, sometime importing batches at over 30,000 images per hour. Now that they’re in, I can browse, search and manage every single image in my library right inside the Photo Mechanic window. Going forward, I can import new images right from my card to the catalog.
Now, the only time I need to leave Photo Mechanic is when I want edit a photo. With single click of the mouse keyboard, I can send an image right to whatever editing program I choose, and then save it back to whatever folder I wish, sync that folder and done.
Like I said, my life just got a whole lot easier, and yours can too. If you’ve used Photo Mechanic in the past, then you, know what an amazing program it is. Photo Mechanic Plus makes it even better.
Whether you’re looking for a good photo management system a fully functional catalog solution, I highly recommend Photo Mechanic or the new Photo Mechanic Plus. Both are awesome programs that will make your workflow go so much faster.
Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography BlogPosted on by Dan
Skylum has released the version 4.3 update to Luminar 4, and with it comes a bread new Search Tool. In addition, they’ve added a number of performance upgrades, a better visual experience when using Looks, and support for some of the latest model cameras, including the Fujifilm X-T4 and X100V.
The new Search Tool is a long awaited feature that adds a totally new functionality to the program, and helps speed up your workflow by streamlining the way that you find your images in the Library.
Located in the Gallery View window, Luminar’s new Search Tool allows you to find images by name, folder, date or extension. (You can watch a quick demo of the search function here). This allows you to quickly locate single images, or batches of images.
You can’t search by caption or keyword yet, but I would imaging that’s coming. As with everything else, the Skylum engineers are moving in steps as they build out the program.
Instead of trying to add everything at once, which make potential problems much more difficult to diagnose, they add one or two new features at a time and improve functionality on a continuous basis. This keeps things much more simple and streamlined in the design process.
That said, even though Luminar’s new Search Tool isn’t quite as powerful as what we’re used to in many programs, it’s a good start, and something they can now build on.
Other Visual & Performance Improvements in v.4.3
In addition to the Search Tool, Luminar 4.3 opens RAW files even faster than before, and overall, the program has been optimized to use considerably less memory, so tools will be more responsive and operate more smoothly. This is especially true with the Crop tool, which has been tweaked for even better performance.
The Looks panel has been improved to give a much better viewing experience. Now, when you hover over a specific Look down in the Looks bar, instead of seeing the preview of that look on the tiny thumbnail, you’ll see the effect previewed on your main image. This will give you a much better idea of how each Look will affect your pictures. (See an example here.)
Luminar has also added support for the latest cameras, including the Fujifilm X-T4, X100V, XT-200, Nikon D780, Z50, Canon EOS-1D X Mark III, Sony A9 II and others from Olympus and Panasonic.
Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography BlogPosted on by Dan
The Luminar 4.2 update just came out last week, and included in the latest version are some refined AI Portrait Enhancer tools and the new AI Augmented Sky tool. I’ll just say this right up front. I’m kind of a …Continue reading →
Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography BlogPosted on by Dan
(NOTE: This event is already over, but you can watch the entire replay above, or at Skylum’s YouTube Channel. ———— Join me for a Luminar 4 webinar tomorrow, on Tuesday, November 26, at 11:00AM PST. During this hour-long presentation, presented …Continue reading →
Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography BlogPosted on by Dan
After much anticipation, Luminar 4 has finally been released. In addition to getting an update to the user interface, Skylum has introduced some very powerful new processing tools, including AI Structure, AI Skin and AI Portrait Enhancer tools, and AI Sky Replacement. …Continue reading →
Dan Bailey's Adventure Photography BlogPosted on by Dan
Luminar 4 is right around the corner, and as I mentioned in my recent post, it’s coming with some brand new tools, including the much talked about AI Structure tool. In addition, Luminar 4 has reworked the user interface on …Continue reading →
