As I speak to more and more photographers about DAM applications, I tend to hear the same thing - they want simple applications that run fast. Well, this next product seem to fit the bill and may be why it is a major player in many photographer’s workflow. What is the product you ask? Well, I’m proud to present you with a detailed review of Photo Mechanic.

Application	Version	Review Date	Price	Review By	Techology
Photo Mechanic	4.5.3.1	June 30, 2008	$150	Andy	PC/MAC
Website:	http://www.camerabits.com

General Overview

I try to keep on top of about 20 forums on a daily basis. Some are certainly more active than others and they run the gamut from scrapbookers all the way to professional photographers. No matter where I am, I see the same question asked over and over… “which product should I use to manage my digital assets?”. When reading responses from other users, it is amazing to see the number of different products that people recommend and it reminds me that what doesn’t appeal or work for one user, it perfect for another. One product I see mentioned over and over is Photo Mechanic (called PM from here on out… that’ll save some time!). PM is more of a photo browser than a true DAM application since no catalog is used to track XMP information. But, it has a lot going for it.. thus, here is my detailed review of Camerabits Photo Mechanic (ok.. one more time and then I’ll use PM).

Installation

As with most other applications, PM uses a standard installation program and presents users with the general install screens including welcome screen, license detail, install destination, progress screen and fini screen:

Not much else to say I guess. The install was fast and pain free and worked as it should. On to the program itself!

User Interface (GUI)

So, after hitting the Close Button, I proceeded to start the program and was presented with the User Interface:

Well, what can I say… its a GUI for a file browser and contains a few panels and windows that can be opened and resized as needed. You can also move the panels around the screen or dock them and resize them as needed:

The GUI is broken down as follows:

1. Navigator - used to choose a folder to display.. click to navigate to the folder, double-click to open and display images
2. Favorites - used to maintain those folders you visit often.
3. Contact Sheets - the panel where all your images thumbnails will display for the chosen folder, search or ingest.
4. Filters - used to filter which results will display based on rating or label.
5. Header Bar - used to further filter (tagged items) or sort as well as the place to change the thumb display size and turn on/off color management.

A few things I noticed right away:

You cannot filter by image formats (!) - I was very surprised by this given the popularity of this program. During my workflow, I might want to work on RAW images separate from JPG/TIFF files so being able to filer and sort by file type is a really important feature. I really thought I missed a setting someplace but alas you cannot filter by image type. NOTE: You can at least get rid of those XMP files shown above by switching off the default: Show Unknown Files as Proxies under the View menu. Given the cryptic name of this feature, I missed it when taking the screenshots above. Deal breaker? Not at all - but surprising to me given the number of professional photographers using the program.

Fast - Wow.. the program is pretty zippy! So, it is certainly true what dedicated users say about the program. jpg and RAW all loaded quickly and generated thumbnails fast. Scrolling through large number of RAW images was also quite fast and XMP display under the thumbnails all appeared without delay (more on this later). Very nice!

Thumb Display Slider - Changing the slider does automatically redisplay the thumbnails in that size (if you have high quality thumbnails turned on in the preferences) the thumb slider does not show you a percentage so you know where 100% is again after you adjust the slider.

Let’s see what else about the GUI…. ah yes - customization. As I mentioned above, there are a number of panels that can be moved around and resized and turned on/off in the GUI. You do have some control over what appears under each thumbnail as well:

In the example above, you’ll notice you have 4 lines under the thumbnail plus a rating/color label. The first line is always the filename. You then have a choice as to what to display on the next 3 lines. While certainly not as open ended or as fancy as Idimager or Imatch, PM does provide you to choose from a wide variety of XMP, EXIF and IPTC fields to include on the 3 lines. This is done from the preferences screen where you can also choose what colors to display:

A nice feature indeed.

Moving right along, you’ll notice the overlay icons on the thumbnail:

These are used to perform some quick functions that are kinda obvious based upon their icons: rotate CCW, rotate CW, view/edit IPTC info and preview the image. I kinda wish I could turn off these overlay icons and have a user defined toolbar with these functions defined. Even better, I wish I could view a mini-toolbar with mini-icons as that displays under each thumbnail’s image display. I like semi-transparent icons like this much better that the ones in PM as they tend to distract me less from my main focus… viewing the image. Oh well….

The IPTC info icon I’ll get into below when discussing Metadata and the rotate ones are obvious in what they do (yes… it is lossless ) so let’s concentrate on the Preview icons and see what you get when you click it:

Let’s look at the screen above in detail:

1. Color Label - PM allows user to define a color label to each photo choosing from 9 labels. You can define what each label color means in the preferences but the following come preloaded with the program:

These will map to your XMP metadata and can be setup to match the labels you might use to help you with your workflow process.

2. Rating - standard star rating display to allow you to rank your photos.
3. Main photo preview pane - exactly that - shows you your photo. Right clicking anywhere on the screen will bring up a menu with the following choices:

I’ll discuss some of these in the sections below.

4. Info panel - the info panel is where you can view some image details as well as perform some editing. The first panel that displays is the Info Text Box. This box can setup to display any EXIF or IPTC variables you’d like as well as free text that you setup in the Edit Info Box:

I like that you can customize it to some degree as far as what is displayed. I kinda wish you could edit the colors a bit to help certain fields stand out from others… but having the data available as you view your photo is handy. Below the info display is a crop tool box:

Once you click the crop tool button, you will see the crop tool on the preview and will be able to draw a crop box on your image. If you have the “Shield” option selected, then you will have the background opacity turned down so you can see your cropped image a bit better. The interesting thing is you can make a crop of the thumb, exit the preview and even without saving the image, still see the crop area in your contact sheet preview. The image itself is not cropped, but your cropped area box still shows… even after you exit and restart the program. Kinda neat I guess… you could use it to mark an area of an image but not actually perform the crop.

The next panel below the Crop is the Zoom tool:

Doing not much more than zooming your image in the preview panel, it allows you to zoom in 8 levels and out 3. Personally, I would prefer to use my mouse wheel to zoom in and out as I can in most programs… but in PM, the mouse wheel moves you between images.

Finally, there is the Histogram tool:

Besides showing a display of your histogram, there isn’t much you can do here.

5. Thumbstrip - displays your thumbs below the preview window. Not much else you can do here either… the rating and color label will display under the thumbs.

6. Toolbar - the toolbar contains some functions that can be performed in the preview panel:

Moving left to right: move to previous and next image, rotate CCW & CW, edit IPTC, remove image from list, copy image, edit image (external), delete image, view one photo, 2 side-by-side or 2 top-bottom, restore panes, full screen mode and color management.

Not much really to say about these functions (IPTC will be covered next) so I’m not going to go into details about it. The SBS view is nice and I like having that in programs.

So, that about wraps up the GUI and some photo viewing functionality in PM. I like many things but wish for some others. Certainly the speed of the program, even with high quality thumbs turned on, it really a huge plus. On the GUI side of things… I would like to be able to customize things further like turning off the overlay icons and controlling the thumbnail data even further. I wish there was an IPTC info panel on the main screen as well as the Preview panel. I wish the program could be configured to use the mouse for zooming in and out. But overall… I keep coming back to how fast the program is.. it just moves quickly!

Downloader

In PM, you have the ability to “ingest” your images into the system and apply metadata information at the same time. To do this, you use.. surprise - the Ingest routine:

As you can see in the image above, you have the ability to perform a few steps during the import of images. You can rename your files, add metadata (via the Stationery Pad - more on that below), erase the source files (from a memory card), add Job information and choose a secondary (ie: backup) location for the files. That’s about all the functions you might want to do anyway although i wish there was a way to convert NEF’s to DNG’s for example - this isn’t possible using the Ingest utility as it doesn’t allow pre or post “scripting”.

Metadata Handling

Ok.. on to the bread of butter of the application - how well does it handle metadata. There are a few ways to view and edit your metadata in PM.. here’s the first:

You can access the above editor by either hitting the “I” button off the thumbnail or via the “i” button off the image preview window (as shown earlier). The IPTC editor allows you full access to each IPTC field. A dropdown icon next to each field allows you to access or edit/create shortcuts that you can add to the field. This is quite handy for things like copyright info or scene/location where are shoot frequently.

You’ll also notice that you can do a few other things from this screen. You can add a rating or label to your image (note: hitting cancel or OK has no effect on this as the changes are made as soon as you do them… unlike the IPTC edits which must be saved by hitting OK. You can add Job data to the XMP file which can contain add’l data that is specific to an assignment.

The real power comes in the form of the Stationery Pad. Think of this as a group of IPTC presets that you can then apply to a single or group of images. This is the basic form in which you can batch apply a group of metadata to images quickly and easily.. and, then using the IPTC editor, further define specifics for you individual images. The Stationery pad is created via the Image menu:

As you can see, the stationery pad is just a big IPTC editor that allows you to load and save sets of data. You can insert Variables into any of the fields by using the Variables box (or typing them in using the format: {serialnum} if you happen to know them:

You can save your pads using the lightening bolt button (not sure why this is the only graphical button(!)) to maintain different sets of data. Whichever set is loaded is used when you apply a stationery pad in the IPTC editor. I setup my stationery pad with basic info like copyright, creator tags, etc. I setup a set for when I’m shooting in Walt Disney World with GPS info and location info. Then, by simply highlighting all my images and choosing the Apply IPTC Stationery Pad to Photos function from the Image menu, I can apply this information in one go. Its a great tool and simple as well… but it does have a few downfalls. I would like a submenu for IPTC Stationery Pad where I can easily load set and then apply it without having to load it from the IPTC Stationery Pad routine first. Again, this would also be a nice thing to have off the right-click menu or as a dropdown option box off the thumbnail itself. But, all in all, its a neat feature that would become a primary means of applying initial metadata to your images.

In addition to using the IPTC editor and stationery pads to handle batch metadata processing, you can also do a simple copy/paste of metadata between images (and groups of images) using the copy and paste metadata functions found off the edit menu:

Ok.. as for other tools to manage your metadata in PM, there is this menu of options:

As you can see above, you have access to a Keywords Panel and a Structured Keywords Panel. PM supports the Controlled Vocabulary and structured keywords setup very nicely which is a great way to add keywords that allow for synonyms or “parents” . For example, if you wanted to add the keyword “Cat” to your image, perhaps you also might want to add: “Animals”, “Pet”, “Kitten”. As you can see, you get a lot more detail. Here’s the structured keywords panel:

You can choose to add the keywords to either your Keywords or Caption section of IPTC and can also setup collections when you have multiple paths. Not a bad option for sure. For the more conventional approach, there is also the Keywords Panel:

This panel allows you to add keywords either by typing them in… or loading a predefined Master list. The Master list might be a list of all your keywords and then you can choose the ones to add to the selected image or images. To be honest, I am a bit baffled by the implementation of this tool. With the inability to see which keywords are already applied to an image, you might be making duplicate entries. Also, the buttons are very confusing since you can load 2 different sets of info from 2 different places, you need to shift/ctrl click keywords to “add” them to an image (a toggle method would have been easier) and if you add keywords to your list you must save them to the master of they do not get added. An interesting approach that I think fails a bit in terms of usability.

And… there are a few other features for metadata that I won’t get into much detail about other than to say they are there:

Well.. that’s about it for Metadata. It certainly has it’s plus and minus points - I really like the fact that most of the extras are hidden to the user. For example, you are simply editing metadata… you don’t need to worry about IPTC vs XMP and where values are being stored. It is refreshing to see the simplicity.. but I feel they masked that ease of use with some un-user friendly buttons and handling. Why have some buttons with graphics while all the rest are text based? Why force users to use both the keyboard and mouse to select items? It is something that hopefully will be addressed in the next major release.

The Kitchen Sink

In this section, I typically present all the extras that the DAM program has that go beyond the main tools of the project. In PM, there aren’t very many. There is a slideshow feature that allows you to view your images using some transitions and can display metadata information:

You cannot save or export the slideshow… so can only really view your photos locally on your PC. A nice way to view them for sure.. but it would have been nice to have some export options which is a very common feature in DAM (and other) products today.

The edit options are only external to PM.. that is, PM doesn’t have any real edit options for your photos beyond the simple rotate. Again, this comes as a surprise to me.

You can FTP or email your images from a right-click option which even allows you to choose the new size for the file and applying metadata in terms of the stationery pad:

You can also choose to “send” your photos to 2 online engines: Digital Railroad and Photoshelter. Unfortunately, there is no way to create your own back end connections to the more popular engines such as Flickr, Fotki and Smugmug.

You are able to save your images in a different format which also allows you to resize, watermark and crop your images along the way:

Finally, there is a small GPS map panel that can be opened to view locations stored in the XMP of the file:

So.. not many tools.. but enough to handle basic image manipulations.

Conclusion

Well.. I think I have really mixed review about the application. Firstly, I love the fact that it is very fast. Scrolling through your thumbnails is a breeze even with 3 lines of metadata and the lack of a dedicated database! This still holds true even with “detailed thumbnail” rendering tuned on - whatever algorithms they are using for this is top notch!

The GUI while clean and nice, could use a bit of an update in terms of user flexibility. I like the ability to define workspaces with docking panels where I’d like them to display. I like the fact you can define what displays on the thumbnails but would like to carry it further like you can in Idimager and Imatch where you have complete control. I want the ability to turn on/off the graphic overlay icons - even better would be to make them appear as small semi-transparent under the image itself - there but out of the way.

As for Metadata handling.. it does the job. I like how you can use the stationery pad to create presets and then apply them to single or groups of images. But, I don’t really understand why it was implemented the way it is.. it get very confusing very fast with all the prompts and different ways to apply this data, especially when it comes to the keywords panels. I do like that much of he IPTC-XMP transfer is completely hidden from the user after initially setting up the preferences. Not have a database to worry about certainly help this.. but truly, things are written very fast.

Of course, the lack of a database really hurts your ability to search for metadata - and this is where PM falsters a bit as a main DAM tool. Unless your photos are very neatly arranged in a folder hierarchy where you can just click and find, your ability to search is restricted to the folders that are currently open… or you must open up all your images as a contact sheet. Now, PM is fast but I’m not sure you want to that often when you reach the 40,000+ photo mark. For smaller collections, the speed of PM makes it a possibility.

The lack of an editor built in doesn’t bother me too much since I rarely use these functions in other DAM applications, but I really wish PM would have included some form of scripting to perform some operations such as converting images to DNG after download into the system.

Lastly, I come to the price. I was shocked to see how much PM actually cost and question if the program is worth $150. A personal decision for sure but it must come into play in the final thoughts. If PM were $49 or $69, then for the speed factor alone, it makes a great investment as a great initial culling tool. With its adherence to Nikon NEF standards, it is great for those that use NX2 for RAW editing as the metadata is securely embedded inside the file. But, I’m not sure I would spend $150 for this as it just doesn’t include all the tools I would want/need as my main DAM application.

So, a tough call on this one. If PM can take care of a few of these issues in the next release, while maintaining it’s amazing speed, I think it could really become a perfect product for maintaining a photo collection.