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Welcome to the User Manual for Photo Mechanic Version 5.

For support articles on the new Photo Mechanic 6 Please go to the Camera Bits Help Center

This is the classic flat view that shows the whole thing on one page. If you'd like to see an alphabetical list of main topics, view the Category page. We hope this is a valuable resource for Photo Mechanic users. If you have comments or requests for additional information that you'd like to see in the manual, please leave feedback for us on the Camera Bits forums. We're actively looking for ways to improve this wiki and make it as helpful as possible. Thanks for your patience, and happy photographing!

- The Camera Bits team

What Is Photo Mechanic?

Photo Mechanic Concepts

Photo Mechanic^® software sets out to be the most useful photo browser on the market today. It does this by being logical in operation, intuitive in use and, most importantly of all, performing its functions as quickly as possible.

The other less obvious approach is that Photo Mechanic does not try to be all things to all people. Photo Mechanic is all about efficiently and quickly moving new files onto your computer and then letting you view and edit those images as quickly as possible in whatever manner you wish. Photo Mechanic is flexible and unobtrusive so that you can get on with your work without having to wait for your computer to catch up or to work its way through background operations you may not need.

Photo Mechanic is not an image editor, it is not a RAW processor and it is not a cataloging application. Photo Mechanic is about importing images, and then viewing and organizing them as quickly and efficiently as possible. By concentrating on these core tasks it aims to be the best at what it does.

The basic concept of Photo Mechanic is simple. Point the Navigator to a folder and Photo Mechanic will generate thumbnails of all the images contained in that folder. Right away you can start previewing the files individually at full screen and mark them with various levels of ‘keepability’.

Right from within Photo Mechanic you can open files into dedicated editors like Adobe Photoshop^® for editing or RAW processing, you can email custom sized JPEGs to a client, you can export to a web page gallery, you can rename all the files and add IPTC copyright data, or all of the above and more.

The Contact Sheet view is the core of Photo Mechanic and consists of a display of thumbnailed images from a particular folder. You can create Contact Sheets from more than one folder and either keep them separate or combine them into one Contact Sheet view. All recognized file formats in the folder will be thumbnailed, including RAW files from most current digital cameras as well as the open source Adobe Digital Negative (DNG) format.

Each thumbnail can be quickly enlarged into a Preview screen where each image may be zoomed up to 800% to check critical sharpness. Images may be cropped and a right-click context sensitive menu allows export of the image in various ways, like FTP to a server, Email, Save as JPEG, etc. Images may be viewed 2-up for a side by side comparison when, for example in portraiture, differences between images can be too subtle for a single image view.

Contact Sheets and Previews are generated as fast as possible with the emphasis being on productivity rather than unnecessary background operations: photographers want to see their images right away and Photo Mechanic displays thumbnails from a folder in the blink of an eye.

In addition to viewing images, the other major function of Photo Mechanic is to efficiently move images from an external data folder, such as a Compact Flash card, onto the user’s computer. Simply copying the files from the card is OK, but Photo Mechanic adds the ability to perform other operations at the same time thus saving time later by not having to double handle files. While files are being downloaded, or ‘Ingested’, Photo Mechanic can rename them, back them up to a secondary destination and edit the metadata of the files to assist in subsequent cataloging.

Once copied, the ubiquitous Contact Sheet view shows all the images in an easy to customize manner and provides tools for sophisticated editing using 9 different Color Classes (1 - 8 and None), 5-Star Ratings, and a Tag check box for each image.

Photo Mechanic is the perfect tool for the first two stages in any workflow: getting the files onto the computer, and then editing them into meaningful sets. Photo Mechanic also allows output of files into a variety of formats which can be Saved, made into Web Galleries as well as FTPed or emailed via the internet.

User Interface Conventions

Contextual menus: one button mouse/trackpad users on Mac OS X can hold down the Ctrl key while clicking to display a contextual menu for the current user interface element. Users with two button (or more) mice can simply click the right button to display a contextual menu for the current user interface element.

Throughout the manual various operations will be performed by right-clicking on user interface elements. One button mouse users should instead Ctrl-click on the indicated user interface element.

Mac and Windows Compatibility

Photo Mechanic operates almost identically on both Apple^® OS X^® and Microsoft^® WIndows^® operating systems. The main difference between the two are that OS X includes utilities like Spotlight Search and RAW Conversion. Also, some of the keyboard shortcuts and modifier keys are different. .

Preferences appear the same with minor layout differences and the absence of the RAW tab on the Windows version.

Keyboard Shortcuts: The keyboard shortcuts list at the end of the manual is the Mac list, fortunately all the shortcuts are specified on all the menus themselves so it’s easy to see what the Windows equivalent will be. Mostly the differences are the combinations of modifier keys:

Example of OS X vs. Windows shortcuts

Option (OS X) and Alt (Windows and OS X) are not really equivalent. The Option key is the modifier key on the Mac

Ctrl (OS X) = Ctrl (Windows) and appears like a caret ^ on the Mac menus

Shift (OS X) = Shift (Windows). The Shift key is the modifier key in the Windows version

Command (⌘) has no direct equivalent. In most cases the Ctrl key will have the same effect in Windows. For example, a ⌘-click in the Preview window will zoom in, use Ctrl-click on Windows for the same result.

For the purposes of clarity the ⌘ key symbol has been used in most places in this manual. Windows users please use the ‘Ctrl’ key instead in most cases. But, consult the full list of Keyboard Shortcuts for both OS X and Windows to get the exact key combinations.

Finder vs Explorer: In Apple OS X, you'll often use the system tool "Finder" to browse for files on your computer. In Microsoft Windows, you'll probably use the system tool "Windows Explorer." If you see the term "Finder" in this manual, you can usually substitute "Windows Explorer" for Windows systems.

System Recommendations

Photo Mechanic is not a particularly resource-intensive program, and there are no hard and fast requirements about the specifications of your hardware to run it. If your computer can run the required operating systems, you should be able to run Photo Mechanic. Much depends upon your own personal tolerance for performance and load times. Speed of the program will also vary with the number of photos being viewed and how large the files are. If you are looking for general guidelines, here are some recommendations:

• 4 GB or minimum ram, more if you will be using other intensive memory usage apps like Adobe products.
• Free disk space needs to be at least twice the amount of the largest memory cards you will be Ingesting.
• Your display should be set to a minimum of 1024 by 768 using 32-bit color space or millions of colors.
• Core duo or i3, i5 or i7 processors.

Installing Photo Mechanic

Installing Photo Mechanic on your computer usually involves downloading the latest installer from http://www.camerabits.com/downloads. Download the version for the operating system on your computer, be it Windows or Apple OS X. (Check for any Known Issues) Make a note of where your computer downloads the file; It's usually a folder called "Downloads." When the download is complete, click on the installer (or double-click as appropriate.)

In some cases, you may need to install the software while logged in as the administrator of your computer. If you have problems installing, check that you have proper permissions for your user account on your computer.

Important: A standard Photo Mechanic license allows you to use the program on up to three computers for one single user. If you ever plan to stop using Photo Mechanic on a computer, you must deactivate Photo Mechanic on that computer so that you do not use up one of your slots inadvertently.

Registering Photo Mechanic

Registration

Registration for Photo Mechanic is quick and simple. When you have downloaded the software and installed it you will be prompted by this screen when you launch the software. Your license key will be emailed to you at the time you pay for the full license. Simply fill in the details and enter the license key.

If you bought a license as an individual then you do not need to enter anything for Department, just your name, exactly as it appears in the purchase confirmation email.

It is also recommended that you save the registration email somewhere safe in case you need to re-install for any reason.

Your license allows use of Photo Mechanic on up to three different computers as long as they are used by the same person.

When you click on the Register button, Photo Mechanic will attempt to contact the Camera Bits Authentication server to validate the registration. This is done to prevent widespread use of pirated license codes. Usually this step will succeed with no further user input required.

Deactivation

(New in Photo Mechanic Version 5 Build 15002 or later)

Your purchase of Photo Mechanic allows you to install the program on up to three computers at a time as long as you are the sole user. If you are planning to uninstall Photo Mechanic from one of your three computers to add it to another computer, you must deactivate the license on the computer from which you wish to uninstall. You can deactivate from the Help menu in Photo Mechanic:

NOTE: If you originally purchased and ran Photo Mechanic prior to Version 5 build 15002, the option to Deactivate may not appear. You can contact Sales and Licensing for ways to deactivate unused instances of Photo Mechanic. Currently, you can't deactivate other computers with this process. You can only deactivate the computer that Photo Mechanic is currently on.

To deactivate this way, you'll need an internet connection. If you can't connect to the internet, it is also possible to deactivate a computer by creating a Deactivation File and then transferring that file to a computer that is connected to the internet.

To do this, choose the same Deactivation option as above, but then select "Deactivate Offline"

1. You will need to transfer this "Deactivation File" to a device with internet access (Example via removable storage drive, memory card/reader, USB cable, etc)

2. From that internet-connected device you'll visit http://camerabits.com/deactivate

3. Upload your Deactivation file for validation

4. That's it.

Proxy Settings for Activation

On OS X

On systems running Apple OS X, use the System Preferences Networking Panel’s Proxies section to configure your settings. Be sure to allow Photo Mechanic access to your Keychain so that it may get your complete HTTP proxy settings automatically.

On Windows:

If your computer is behind a firewall and requires the use of a Proxy server then Photo Mechanic can be configured to use settings contained within a proxy settings file.

First, create a text file named: http-proxy-settings.cfg

Inside the file place the following information (one piece of information per line):

You will put the http-proxy-settings.cfg file into a system folder. You may need to change your system to allow hidden system files and folders to be shown. To do this in Windows Explorer:

• Click on Local Disk ( C: )
• Click on the Tools menu.
• Click on the Folder options... menu item.
• Click on the View tab.
• Find the Hidden files and folders items in the Advanced settings list box.
• Click on the Show hidden files, folders and drives radio button
• Click OK to Apply the changes.

Once you've done that, you can place the http-proxy-settings.cfg in the following location:

For Windows 7/8 the location is:

For Windows Vista:

Note: Windows XP is no longer supported for activation.

While it is obvious that entering your username and password into a plain text file is less than secure, the http-proxy-settings.cfg file only needs to exist long enough for the registration process to complete. Then the file should be destroyed. (Note: Photo Mechanic will also be unable to automatically check for updates if you delete this cfg file. If you want to deactivate Photo Mechanic on this computer in order to free up a seat for your license, you will need to create this file again in the same place.)

Trial

New users who have never tried Photo Mechanic can try the full, unrestricted version for free. When you download and install the program, you can request a trial from the registration dialog. You must be connected to the internet for Photo Mechanic to activate your free trial. You'll be able to use the program for 30 days to see if you like it.

Manual Activation

If you're unable to connect to the internet even via proxy, you can still activate as long as you can get to a different computer or device with internet access, such as a smartphone.

Photo Mechanic will give you the option to generate a "Passport File"

1. You will need to transfer this passport file to a device with internet access (Example via removable storage drive, memory card/reader, USB cable, etc)
2. From that internet-connected device you'll visit http://camerabits.com/activate
3. Upload your passport file for validation.
4. Download the validated passport file
5. Transfer the validated passport file back to the original computer.

Then in the registration process, you will upload that validated file to Photo Mechanic to complete registration.

We know this process can be cumbersome, so we highly recommend registering Photo Mechanic while the computer is connected to the internet.

If you get a message about a "challenge code" you may be on an old version. In that case, update to the latest version and try again.

Activation via Command Line

There may be situations where activating Photo Mechanic via a command line interface via scripting is efficient. (e.g. Bulk licenses) Assuming you have a working Internet connection, Photo Mechanic (Version 5, builds 15278 and higher) can now be activated by the command line as follows:

On Windows:

First make sure your script is running with its current directory being the directory that Photo Mechanic resides within and that you are using an Administrative Command Prompt or running your script from a Windows PowerShell script as System.

To activate Photo Mechanic use the /activate switch. The /department parameter is optional. If your names have spaces in them, quote the switch and the value as well.

To deactivate, use the /deactivate switch.

To check whether a given system is activated, use the /activated switch.

NOTE: The "" after start is necessary or the start command won't work. The start command itself is necessary because otherwise execution of your script will run in parallel to the execution of Photo Mechanic itself and you won't get the result of the command back in your script properly.

On Apple OS X:

Activation and Deactivation both require elevated privileges. Either run from a shell with the ability to read/write to /Library/Preferences, or by using sudo.

To activate Photo Mechanic use the --activate switch. The --department parameter is optional. If your names have spaces in them, either escape the spaces or quote the parameter and the value as well.

To deactivate, use the --deactivate switch.

To check whether a given system is activated, use the --activated switch.

--activated will return 1 for no activation present or for legacy registrations. --activated will return 0 when a valid activation is present.

Output for all commands goes to stderr. The shell will get the application exit value in $?.

NOTE: There is currently no way to do manual offline activations via command line.

File Formats

Recognized File Types

Image File Formats

RAW file formats

Movie file formats

Where a file format is not properly recognized, Photo Mechanic will attempt to retrieve any embedded tiff/jpg previews. In many cases, such as with digital backs from Phase One, the resulting thumbnail will be very small. If the Enlarge photos to fit preview and slide show option is set in Preferences > Preview, then Photo Mechanic will enlarge this preview to fill the window and the image may look "pixellated."

Some file formats may need QuickTime from Apple to be installed. These formats are GIF, PICT, BMP and TGA. All movie files need QuickTime to be displayed as thumbs. Macs should have QuickTime already installed, so this applies to Windows computers only.

Getting Started

Congratulations!

You've installed Photo Mechanic! Get ready for lightning fast browsing, powerful metadata editing, and a supercharged workflow! Let's get started:

Photo Mechanic is an image browser designed with speed and ease of use in mind. You can call it a photo editor as well. But unlike other photo editing programs that are designed to work with one photo at a time in order to edit its pixels, Photo Mechanic is designed to work with groups of photos together in order to manage them. Professional photo editors who handle lots of photos daily and often under deadline understand this distinction. Their job involves selecting photos, not selecting pixels.

We've prepared some videos to help you understand the basics of Photo Mechanic. Watch these to kickstart your Photo Mechanic education.

Or if you'd rather dive right in, here are some notes to help you:

First Use

When you launch Photo Mechanic for the first time you will see an empty Contact Sheet window and the main menu bar at the top of the screen. There are several ways to open a new Contact Sheet.

1. Select File > New Contact Sheet Tab (⌘N) to open a blank Contact Sheet within the main window. Then drag and drop a folder into the main part of the Contact Sheet. Any images within that folder will be displayed as a series of thumbnails.

2. Select File > Open Contact Sheet (⌘O) to open an existing folder as a new Contact Sheet. An Open dialog box will appear so you can navigate to the folder you wish to work with.

3. Drag a folder from the desktop onto the Photo Mechanic icon.

Choose a folder and Photo Mechanic will quickly generate a Contact Sheet of thumbnails for all the image files in that folder.

You can set up Photo Mechanic to start up in a variety of ways. By default Photo Mechanic starts up with an empty Contact Sheet window. You can set it to instead present an Open dialog, or you can have it open the last opened Contact Sheet. This setting can be set in the General tab of the Preferences dialog.

Contact Sheets

This is the main window that you will be using in Photo Mechanic, where you will view all the image files in your folders. You can have more than one Contact Sheet open at a time. They will appear as tabs at the top of the Contact Sheet area. You can switch quickly between them by holding down the Control key and pressing the right or left arrow keys in Windows. On macOS, you can do this by Command-{ or Command-}.

Images appear as individual thumbnails with the image file name displayed underneath. Hovering the mouse over an image will reveal up to 4 icons, two for rotation of the thumbnail, one for IPTC Info Display and the other to trigger the Preview window for more detailed viewing. Rotations are only performed on the display, it is one of Photo Mechanic’s basic operating philosophies that, as far as is possible, no changes are made to the image data in your valuable files.

Below each thumbnail is a small check box to ‘tag’ the image and a grey strip, the Color Class Bar, which will change as images are Color Classed or Star Rated in subsequent editing.

Each thumbnail can have up to 3 lines of further {variable} info displayed, much like Tool Tips but displayed on each thumb. Enable these labels in Preferences under the Contact Sheet Tab.

The Main View

On the Toolbar is a slider to control the size of the thumbs; this is interactive and can also be set to a default size in Preferences. When you return to a contact sheet after closing it the thumbnail sizes will be as set in Preferences.

Across the top of the main area window are Tabs, one per open Contact Sheet. Tabs can be selected by clicking on them or dragged between multiple open windows. This makes is easy to view many Contact Sheets of many different folders.

Photo Mechanic has context-sensitive menus. Right-clicking (or Ctrl-clicking) on a thumbnail, or selection of thumbnails, brings up menu of available operations. The same commands can be found in the various menus.

Right-click on a thumbnail to bring up this context sensitive menu. (On a single button mouse use the Ctrl key.)

View Panes

There are various ways to configure the Main View, these can be selected from the main menu under View.

• Show/Hide Toolbar toggles on and off the Toolbar under the main menu at the top of the screen. It contains basic file operation Icons, the Thumbnail Size slider, Sort Options and Color Management On/Off.

• Navigator This is the familiar Folder View for navigation within the directory structure of your computer. Use this pane to select the folder you wish Photo Mechanic to make a contact sheet from. Double-click to open the folder as a new Contact Sheet. Option-Double-Click to add a Folder to the currently open contact sheet

• Favorites A very useful pane in which you can set folders as Favorites to speed up navigation. This can be very useful if a folder is deep down in the directory structure and you need to refer to it often.

• Tasks This shows the progress of things like memory card ingest and FTP uploads. If you close your Ingest progress dialog and need to see it again, you can double-click the progress here.

The Favorites and Navigator can be resized by dragging the splitter bars between the panes. Double-clicking the splitters will cause them to collapse. Double-clicking a collapsed splitter will cause it to expand to its original position.

Navigator and Favorites

Folders operate much the same way as they do in other programs but Photo Mechanic adds refinement with the Favorites and Navigator to allow easy access to commonly used folders.

The Navigator is a view of the familiar hierarchy of folders which can be opened to reach sub-folders etc. By dragging a folder from Navigator into the Favorites panel you now have essentially a ‘shortcut’ to that folder without having to fully negotiate the folder hierarchy.

A good way of working is to have the folders you are working with visible in the Favorites pane, and use them to copy and move files around. Favorites and Navigator both offer Copy selected items here and Move selected items here commands on their contextual menus.

Dragging a folder into the Contact Sheet area will open it as a Contact Sheet.

You can drag images from the Contact Sheet view onto any folder to move them, or hold the Option key to copy them instead of moving them.

To remove a Favorite Folder, right-click (Ctrl-click) on it and choose Remove.

There are some other nice refinements to the Favorites and Navigator Panels: Right-click (Ctrl-click) on a Navigator or Favorite folder to bring up the above menus. In the Mac OS X version of Photo Mechanic, you can set a color for the Folder to aid in distinguishing them later. You can add a new folder within an existing folder: the parent folder is then shown with a small triangle to the left of its title to indicate that it can be expanded.

To combine two folders into one Contact Sheet, right-click (Ctrl-click) the folder you want to add in and select the ‘Open in Current Contact Sheet’ option. Option-double-click will also open the folder in the current contact sheet window.

To remember the set of folders you are currently browsing as a Contact Sheet tab use the “Remember Folders as a Favorite...” menu item on the File menu. This will allow you to set a name for the set of folders and once named will cause a “Multi-Folder” favorite to be created in the Favorites panel.

A newly created Multi-Folder favorite. To open it as a Contact Sheet you can double-click it, or you can use its contextual menu to open it. You can also rename it or remove it via the contextual menu.

Contact Sheet Tab Menus

Contact Sheet tabs have right-click contextual menus that offer several helpful commands. Options will change depending on if you have images selected or not and if you have multiple tabs open or not.

• Close this tab: Closes just that Tab but leaves other Contact Sheet tabs open.
• Close ALL BUT this tab: Closes other tabs but leaves the active tab open.
• Reveal in Finder (OS X)/ Reveal in Explorer (Windows): Will show the path to the folder shown in the Contact Sheet and allow you to open that folder up on your computer.

• Add to Favorites: Adds that Contact Sheet to the Favorites Pane
• Copy selected items here: Copies the selected items from one Contact Sheet to a new sheet, leaving the originals intact.
• Move selected items here: Moves the selected items from one Contact Sheet to a new sheet.

Tasks

This pane in the Contact Sheet will show you the progress of certain tasks that Photo Mechanic is performing, like multiple memory card ingests, copying files, or FTP uploads, etc. Double-clicking on a progress bar will open a dedicated progress dialog.

Loupe cursor

Images can be previewed at 100% from the Contact Sheet by using the Loupe cursor. The ‘Cursor Mode’ toolbar item indicates which mode the cursor is in. The Cursor Mode can be quickly toggled by pressing the ‘Z’ key. The ‘Cursor Mode’ toolbar item may also be clicked to choose which cursor mode is desired.

Once activated, the Loupe effect is started by clicking and holding the mouse button down on thumbnail of interest. A moment later (depending on the resolution of the photo and the speed of your system) the largest available area not obscuring your view of the thumbnail is replaced by the preview of the image. While holding down the mouse button you can reveal other parts of the image by panning the Zoom outline around the thumbnail area.

Releasing the mouse button stops the preview and returns to viewing all thumbnails.

Most operations on thumbnails are allowed during Loupe cursor mode including selection, though the area available for selection is the thumbnail’s text area since clicking in the thumbnail image area starts previewing the image. You can still perform inline renaming by double-clicking on the thumbnail’s filename, set Color Class, Rating and Tags.

Mac only: If you don’t see the Cursor Mode indicator on your toolbar, you can add it by customizing your toolbar. You can enter customization mode by right-clicking (or Ctrl-clicking) on any empty space in the toolbar and choosing ‘Customize Toolbar...’ from the contextual menu that appears.

The Loupe cursor doesn’t completely replace the Preview window since it doesn’t support cropping or viewing more than one zoomed image at a time, but it does come in handy.

Single Images

Keyboard shortcuts are a good way to speed up operations and are worth taking the time to learn. When there is only a single image selected or highlighted in the Contact Sheet window there are certain shortcuts that can be used:

Selection Tags and Color Classes

Selecting Images

In the Contact Sheet window simply click once on a thumbnail to select it. Notice that the background changes color when you do this. In Preferences you can customize this to pick a background color that you can quickly recognize. A good combination to use is light grey for unselected, with black text and dark grey or black with white text for selected images. The important thing is to be able to tell at a glance which images are selected or not.

To select multiple images together, hold down the ⌘ key and click another image. Holding down the Shift key selects images between your first selected image and a new selected image. Images can be removed from a selection by clicking on them again while holding down the ⌘ key. To clear the selection simply click on another image, outside the images completely or ⌘D to Deselect All.

(The effect of the Shift and ⌘ modifier keys can be swapped in Preferences)

Tagging

A Tagged image is one which has the small checkbox ticked in the lower right of the thumbnail. Tagging is distinct from Color Class as it is an on/off facility and can be used in parallel with the Color Classes to allow a huge variety of editing and categorizing strategies.

To Tag an image simply click in the check box or, with a selection of images,⌘+ Tags and ⌘- Untags. For a single image T will toggle the tag.

⌘T selects all tagged images. F3 will filter the view to show Tagged Images only.

Modifier-click on the Tag box in a selection of images to Tag or Untag the whole selection.

Color Classes

One of the fundamental features in Photo Mechanic is the ability to mark images with 8 different color classes plus ‘None’. This allows an Editor to make subtle distinctions between image groups based on whatever criteria are deemed necessary. For example, a photographer might like to divide images up into ‘Top Shots’, ‘Keepers’, ‘Not Sure’ and ‘Oh dear!’. Like everything in Photo Mechanic, Color Classes are fully customizable in Preferences and so you could use Classes like these if you choose. The Defaults are Winner, Winner Alt, Superior etc but there is no reason why you cannot use your own Classes, and colors if you like. You can even chose your own color scheme by clicking on the color swatch in the Preferences screen and picking a new color for each. Important Note: If you also work with Adobe Lightroom and want to be able to set Color Classes that show up in LR, please see this note on compatibility settings: Maximizing IPTC/XMP Compatibility

Color class descriptions in Preferences > General

To use the Color Classes simply hit a number key when you have a single image selected and a bar beneath the thumbnail will change to the appropriate color. If you want to set a color class for a multiple selection, just hold the ⌘ key down when you hit the number key.

If you click on the color bar under a thumbnail the Color Classes list will appear for yet another way to set the Color Class. To apply a Color Class to a selection, use the Modifier key when making the change and the new class will apply to the whole set.

See Slide Show for another way to use Color Classes.

Color Class Widget

The Color Class Widget can be seen at the bottom right of the Contact Sheet window. To use it make sure the check box is ticked and then click on a color box to either display or hide images of that particular color class. The last box on the right toggles on and off those images with no set color class. You can click-drag the mouse pointer across all the boxes to check or uncheck the colored squares.

Using this widget, together with tagging, gives you a huge variety of ways of sorting out your images to suit your own personal style of working. Along with Star Ratings, Color Classes are also compatible with Adobe Bridge and Lightroom.

By turning on only the green Class in the Color Class Widget, only images with that Color Class will be shown, as seen below.

Modifier-click on a Color to show only that Color and again to turn all colors on again. Modifier-click on an off color to turn that color on and the other colors off. You can even choose to show only those images that have no Color Class set.

Drag your cursor over the widget to toggle the colors on and off.

To remove all filtering and show all images choose View All from the View menu or press F1. ⌘-Ctrl-F1 through ⌘-Ctrl-F9 will also filter the Color Classes.

To set a Color Class display default, set the Widget to display the Classes you want, right-click on the Widget and select Set as Default. Later you can reset the Widget to the new default by right-clicking and choosing Restore to Default.

Star Rating Widget

Star Ratings work in much the same way as Color Classes, and the combination of the two allows for quite sophisticated ranking and sorting. One benefit of Star Rating is that it can be read by other applications so a ‘rated’ folder of images can be viewed in other apps with the Star Ratings still intact.

The star widget is right next to the color class widget

To set a Rating on a selected image or group of images in the Contact Sheet view use Ctrl-1 to 5 (on OSX) or Alt-1 to 5 (on Windows) to set the number of stars. On individual thumbnails click the Star Rating you want or drag the mouse over the stars to increase or decrease the rating.

To display differently rated images you can use the Star Rating Widget to the left of the Color Class Widget and it operates in all the same way as the Color Class widget. This filters Star Rated images but does not select them.

To actually select certain Star Ratings,⌘-Option-3, for example, will select all images currently displayed in the contact sheet with a Star Rating of 3.

To use the mouse to display certain Ratings just click on the Star/Number you wish to show. You can have any, all or some Ratings displayed, shown by dark or light Star/Numbers. You can drag the mouse over the Stars to include more ratings.

To set a default, set the Widget to display the Rating that you want, and right-click on the Widget and select Set as Default. Later you can reset the Widget to the new default by right-clicking and choosing Restore to Default.

The check box to the left of each Widget disables the effects of that Widget, showing all images in the contact sheet.

Note that the Widgets operate on the current Contact Sheet of displayed images, not necessarily the entire folder. In other words if you have set the Color Class Widget to show only thumbnails with a Red label, the Star Rating Widget will then sort Star Rated images within this Red subset.

External Compatibility

Both Color Classes and Star Ratings can be recognized by certain other applications such as Adobe^® Photoshop Lightroom^® and Adobe Bridge^®. Star Ratings can also be exchanged with Microsoft^® Expression Media^®.

Color Classes will be recognized by apps if the text label for each class is exactly the same in each app. You can edit the default Photo Mechanic labels in Preferences/ General. It doesn’t matter what the Color Classes are labelled, just that the labels must be the same in all apps.

It is also a good idea to edit the actual colors themselves to give consistency throughout the various apps. Lightroom and Adobe Bridge use the same color sets and these cannot be directly edited, only the labels. Photo Mechanic allows editing of the colors so it makes sense to make sure it is set to the Adobe default of red, yellow, green blue and purple.

This is how the General Preferences might be set in Photo Mechanic:

The General Preferences screen

• Adobe Bridge: Color Class labels can be edited in Preferences/Labels, and there are only 5 to use. These will correspond to the Color Classes in Photo Mechanic which have the exact same text labels. The other three will not show up in Bridge and can be used for Photo Mechanic-specific sorting and editing.

• Lightroom: Five Color Class labels can be edited in the “Library” mode under Metadata/Color Label Set/Edit. Type in new labels and click ‘Change’ to lock in the new labels.

For Color Classes and Ratings to show up in other applications, Lightroom must be set to write metadata changes to the original files automatically - to set this option look under Metadata / Save Metadata, or to do it automatically, look in File/Catalog Settings and check the ‘Automatically write changes into XMP’ checkbox.

You must also use XMP sidecar files with your RAW files when working with Adobe products. Click here to see the best Adobe-compatible IPTC4XMP settings.

• Microsoft Expression Media: Star Ratings work fine, and color labels will work properly if you set the ‘Synchronize Color Class with IPTC/XMP Urgency field’ checkbox.

Remember to Synch the new ratings (Action/Synch Annotations) back to the original files after you have made changes otherwise the new Color Classes and Star Ratings will not be read by other apps since they initially only exist in the Expression Media database. Expression Media does not write metadata to the original files unless told to.

• Capture NX2 (Nikon): Star Ratings work fine, and color labels will work properly if you set the ‘Synchronize Color Class with IPTC/XMP Urgency field’ checkbox. You must also embed IPTC4XMP in your TIFF-based RAW files (NEFs.)

Sorting

Much of the sorting that can be done in Photo Mechanic is done using Star Ratings, Color Classes and Tags, these are explained in detail in the Selections section.

Photographers are used to spreading transparencies on a light box and gradually dividing them up into sets such as ‘Keepers’, ‘Not Sure’ and ‘Wastebin’. Photo Mechanic uses a more sophisticated version of much the same method by assigning images with a Color Class to designate its worthiness. Classes can be set individually or en masse and each Class can be displayed on its own, or with any other Classes. In fact the number of ways in which the images can be sorted and displayed is really only limited by your own imagination and workflow requirements.

Tagging is a simple way of sorting your images, they are either tagged or not. You can display all tagged images, all untagged images or all of them together. For a quick edit simply click the tag box on all the images you like and then hit F3 to display Tagged Only. At this point you might choose to Select All (⌘A) and FTP (⌘U) the whole set as small preview JPEGs to a client.

Other tools for Sorting include the “Sort by” menu on the Contact Sheet Toolbar.

There are presets to sort by, plus a custom option which allows sorting by any variable, and even by a secondary criteria. This means you could display the files by file type, file size, even by ISO setting.

A note on Sorting and Filtering

The tag is part of each image's metadata that needs to be read from the file and performing this reading takes time. Photo Mechanic can get the data it needs from the files on a fast local drive on the order of a hundred images per second. If it is on a network drive, it can drop as low as tens per second. Photo Mechanic generally is set to not filter on anything at all and as such it can get directly on to the business of showing you your images. But in order to filter and only show the tagged images, Photo Mechanic must get the metadata for all of the images before it can filter out the non-tagged images. If Photo Mechanic has already read the metadata on all of the images, then the filter will happen in mere seconds. But if it hasn't read all of the metadata yet, then it must read it all and depending on how fast Photo Mechanic can access that data, the filter can take a long time. In your case this filtering is taking minutes.

For example: With 15,000 images, even at 100 images read per second, it will take 150 seconds (2.5 minutes) to begin the filtering process. If Photo Mechanic is only able to read the metadata on 10 images per second then it would take 25 minutes to begin the filtering process.

Photo Mechanic does read all of the metadata in the background while you browse your images, but if it hasn't read it all then it can take a long time to do any kind of filtering. The Sort Cache which was introduced in Photo Mechanic 5 does help with this task, but the Sort Cache is of no use if the metadata hasn't been read fully at least once prior to the sorting/filtering. If images have changed since the sort data was cached, then it must be re-read to make certain that the sort data isn't stale. If your images don't change often, then the Sort Cache can be quite beneficial.

Set sort order from the main menubar

Finding