kdoran

A photographer friend, who shoots mostly portraits, recommended Photo Mechanic. She uses the software to cull her photos before she uploads them to Light Room. Any other users out there? I am trying to put together a workflow for myself that makes more sense than my current workflow that seems to have more steps than needed. One of my biggest challenges is that I take waaaaay to many pictures during a portrait session and I am wondering how helpful photo mechanic would be in my culling process. Thanks for the input.

asaya Loc: Syracuse, NY

I use PM been using for a while think it's pretty worthwhile if your shooting large shoots if your just shooting small events probably not worth the extra money

Haydon

I've been using it lately for portrait work. You can have the client go through them, color code or star them and then quickly select and export according to preference to a folder. It will save a lot of time narrowing down your selections. Apparently it's highly regarded with photojournalism as a useful tool as well. It will load the RAW files significantly quicker than LR. It's a fast processor.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

I use FastRawViewer for culling. If you just need a quick and cheap tool simply to render a RAW for evaluation and culling, look at all the cheap and lightweight options.

DirtFarmer Loc: Escaped from the NYC area, back to MA

So what is your current workflow that has more steps than necessary?

I'm not a PhotoMechanic user but I have read several posts that like it. Personally I use LR. I just go through a shoot and use keyboard shortcuts to place color labels on the images with promise and reject flags on the duds. I can then filter on the duds and delete them and filter on the unlabelled shots and remove them from the catalog.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

For large shoots, I cull at least three full passes before I import the culled results to LR. The first two passes are at 100% looking at the image details. If they're not sharp now in an unprocessed RAW quickly rendered in FRV, they won't get better in subsequent processing. I can't get LR to render a 1:1 preview anywhere near as fast, that is subsecond vs a few seconds per image, time that adds up significantly for a large group of images. I'll use LR for the remaining 100 potential keepers after culling rather than 1:1 previews for the initial 1000 from the camera.

will47 Loc: Indianapolis, IN

Is this easy to use? Can u give me a brief instruction on this?

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Haydon

Will look on YT for video instruction. It will give you the visual aspect that can't be easily conveyed in text.

GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

I used PhotoMechanic at work and it was amazing, but it’s not cheap. This looks like a good program at 1/10th the price of PhotoMechanic. Thanks for posting. I may try it for home.
I use ACDSee and it’s ok. A bit slow and glitchy at times.

rook2c4 Loc: Philadelphia, PA USA

Photo Mechanic offers a 30-day free trial. Perhaps it would be best to simply try it out and see if it can do everything you need an editor to do, and if it is worth purchasing the license.

Blenheim Orange Loc: Michigan

This, from the FastRawViewer website is worth a read.

Dispelling a Myth: Viewing RAW is Impossible

https://www.fastrawviewer.com/viewing-raw-is-not-impossible

Yes, how often do we hear this myth: RAW is not an image. This particular misconception is extremely convenient and is often used as an excuse by those trying to explain why it is only natural that most image viewers display embedded JPEG instead of RAW, JPEG-based histogram instead of RAW histogram, and over- and underexposure overlays derived from JPEG previews instead of calculating over- and underexposure indication based on RAW data.

In fact, RAW is an image, but in a less familiar format. What is said to set RAW data apart from traditional images:

1. "The color on RAW data is wrong"

This is a "color space mismatch" issue.

Every image has a "color space" implicitly or explicitly associated with it, and it needs to be respected. To display an image correctly we need to convert it from the associated "color space" to monitor color space, otherwise the color looks off and may even look funny.

A RAW image is recorded in the sensor's "color space." So nothing is really new here. As usual, all we need to do is assign adequate "color space" to the data. This color space is derived from sensor characterization, pretty much the same way we do it with scanners.

2. "RAW images are very dark"

In fact it is a mismatched Gamma (γ) issue.

RAW images are linear, that is they have γ=1.0 and thus look dark (underexposed) and flat if the correct Gamma γ=1.0 is not assigned to data.

This is not really a difference because any popular image format can be coded with any Gamma value. To display an image correctly, be it RAW, TIFF, JPEG, or PNG, we always take Gamma into account, otherwise the image looks either under- or over-exposed, with wrong contrast.

It is quite obvious that to solve 1. and 2., all one needs is banal color management. It is the same for TIFF files and for RAW files.

3. "RAW data is mosaicked"

Yes, it is most often mosaicked (Bayer pattern RGBG) data, meaning we don't have RGB triplets for each pixel. No big deal. With JPEG images we also do not have full color data at each pixel location; moreover - internally, a regular JPEG does not even contain RGB data. It contains something like YCbCr 4:2:0 data, which needs to be interpolated before displaying. In both cases - either JPEG or RAW - we need to apply some unpacking and interpolation procedures to display the image. However, JPEG is a recognized image format, and thus RAW also should be recognized as an image format.

4. "RAW is open for interpretation; and not a final image"

Well, even more reasons to display RAW for culling.

Generations of photographers have found contact sheets and index prints indispensable -- while contact sheets and index prints do not represent the final photo, they are very useful for culling based on 5 criteria: subject, composition, exposure, focus, grain (noise, if we are in digital domain). Good index prints are not "interpreted" in any way, instead they look a tad dull and undersaturated, as they try to convey everything we captured, from details in deep shadows to details in extreme highlights, without any clipping, compressing, and other artistic tools we apply for final prints.

That's what a RAW viewer is for, too - to allow selecting images based on full information available in RAW data, displayed on your monitor. Not to mention that selecting RAW shots is a task different from processing them, and as such it needs a different set of tools.

In summary, to display a RAW image one needs to use an adequate color space (white balance is a part of this), the internal data format, one must account for linear Gamma, compose RGB triplets, and it is very important to know how to unpack RAW data fast enough to not cause discomfort. That is what we do in FastRawViewer.

FastRawViewer gives you a fast, accurate viewing of the actual image data you captured. No compression, no color gamut limitations imposed by in-camera processing, no deceptive histogram, and all over- and under-exposure warnings right from RAW data.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

This is only going to result in what one would expect to happen when putting a stick into the cages of several of the UHH animals ....

Blenheim Orange Loc: Michigan

dannac Loc: 60 miles SW of New Orleans

+ 1