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While programs like Picasa and iPhoto can meet the image organizing needs of many digital photographers, professional and prosumer shooters demand more muscle from their wares. Over the years, they've sought that muscle from applications like Photo Mechanic (US$150).
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The robust image organizer, published by Camera Bits, recently celebrated two milestones. It reached the 35,000 licenses-sold mark, and it released a new cut of the program, version 4.6.1.
This latest rendering of the software, which works on both Macs and PCs, has some elegant and useful new features.
Hoovering Images
It has beefed up its potent "ingest" function for vacuuming images from camera cards or any other place containing folders of photos.
As with previous versions of the offering, files can be renamed as they are imported into the program. Those names can be customized in a number of ways by using variables defined by you.
A nice touch to this feature is its ability to remember what photos have been previously downloaded so that only new photos are added to your hard disk.
Collapsing Directories
Moreover, the software will collapse the directory structure found on the host media when transferring files.
If you've ever explored the directory structure of a media card, you'll often find your photos buried beneath several directory levels. Photo Mechanic will ignore that directory structure and transfer all the images on the card to a single destination folder on your hard drive. That cuts down on "drilling time" when exploring for images.
One disappointment on the Mac with the ingest function is that it won't ingest photos stored in iPhoto Library.
Automated Geo-Tagging
Making backups of photos on the fly is also facilitated by the program. That's because in addition to permitting you to name a destination folder for images you're bringing into the application, you can name a secondary destination folder, too, where the software will stash copies of everything it ingests.
To those features, Camera Bits has added the ability to edit photos while an import is in progress and to import images from several sources simultaneously.
Another new feature in this version of Photo Mechanic is geo-tagging. It allows you to manually attach GPS coordinates to an image or group of selected images.
To add geographic information to a photo, you select it from the thumbnail palette (contact sheet) and choose "Set GPS Coordinates ... " from the image drop-down menu.
A window will appear with two panes.
The left pane has a large thumbnail of your selected image and fields for typing in longitude and latitude figures.
Connection to Google Maps
If your computer is connected to the Internet, the right pane displays a Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) map. Above the map is a "Get GPS" line.
You can type some geographic information on the line -- a zip code, street address, unique landmark and such -- and a Google map will appear that includes your location.
Clicking the "Accept Location" under the map will transfer geographic information from the map to GPS fields in the abutting window pane.
If you select multiple photos before opening the GPS window, you can apply the coordinates created in the window to all the selected images with a single mouse click.
You can also import GPS log files in GPX or NMEA format into the program and plot the coordinates on a Google map from within the software.
RAW to DNG Conversion
If you work with more than one RAW format, you may find another new feature in Photo Mechanic useful: conversion of multiple RAW formats into the Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) digital negative (DNG) files.
RAW formats allow you to capture images without compressing their data. Compressed data formats, like JPG, can affect the quality of a photo.
The problem is that there's no standard RAW format. A RAW file captured with a Nikon digital camera, for instance, is different from a RAW file shot with a Canon (NYSE: CAJ) model or one nabbed with an Olympus unit.
Adobe has attempted to address that problem with its DNG format. It preserves the quality alpha photographers look for in RAW files without the inconvenience of proprietary file formats.
Although Photo Mechanic permits the conversion of RAW to DNG files from within the program, it does require the installation of a separate conversion application to function. Such a program for a PC or Mac is offered for free by Adobe at its Web site.
Blessing for High-Volume Photogs
The interface in the PC and Mac versions of Photo Mechanic is very similar. Photos are displayed on a palette as thumbnails whose size can be adjusted. Beside the palette is a vertical window for navigating files and tagging favorite folders.
A tool bar above the palette contains widgets for toggling the cursor between selection and "loupe" mode, uploading images to places like Flickr or an FTP server, burning photos to disc and performing color matching. The Mac edition also has a search bar.
Photo Mechanic is an industrial-strength workflow program designed to automate the tedious tasks associated with processing large numbers of images. High volume lens-slingers will find it a blessing for managing the enormous metadata demands of a large photo library.
