GoofyNewfie Loc: Kansas City

Doesn’t look like RFV has an option to rename files.
I never use the file name created by the camera.
But for the price, I can do that later.

OnDSnap Loc: NE New Jersey

Whats way to many? I'll use PM for sport shoots, where 1,200- 2,000 or more photos are are not uncommon during a game and there is a deadline to get the prints to a newspaper etc. etc. Otherwise LR works just fine for me.

yssirk123 Loc: New Jersey

Adobe Bridge has worked well for me, but Photo Mechanic sounds like it may fit your needs better.

dhnieman

I take event photos and on the average the publisher requests a gallery of at least 100 photos for each occasion. Durning the shoot it is usual to take 3 exposures for each good image published. Lightroom is the storage and editing tool I use and apply Photo Mechanic to cull all images stored and edited in Lightroom (they're not actually stored in Lightroom, Lightroom points to where I have stored them).
Workflow:
Open PhotoMechanic
Remove card/disc from camera and place in disc slot or card reader
Tell Photo Mechanic on which Disc or Card the images are located (actually you don't have to tell PM, it sees them on its' own).
Tell PM where I want the 300 photos stored (example; Photos/Events/2019/ Dec 21 Bills vs Patriots Tailgate )
Tell PM "Ingest"
PM begins pulling up 300 images (really pretty quick) and as they are being ingested I review.
I select the 100 images to be edited in Lightroom by color coding them.
Then click and drag at one time all the 100 selected photos to Lightroom
Easy as Pie. And so much faster than Importing and reviewing RAW files directly into Lightroom.

BobBobThompson

I use Breezebrowser Pro and also Downloader Pro.

John Howard Loc: SW Florida and Blue Ridge Mountains of NC.

I have tried it recommended by a NG Photog in a class I took. It is definitely a fast system for culling your images. If you are working to a deadline or racing other photogs it can be helpful. However, I do not use it on a regular basis as it puts another step in the process. Cull in PM, then export and import to LR. I just go straight to LR with minimum set for the preview and with my new computer it moves pretty fast.

df61743 Loc: Corpus Christi, TX

Photo Mechanic is generally my first step in post processing. It's useful for viewing and culling, but that's not it's most important function for me. My very first step, done on the copy of the photos that will become archived as my "untouchable negatives" is to use the built in Photo Mechanic IPTC notepad to set metadata tags for the photos. It just takes seconds to tag every photo with IPTC metadata, similar to EXIF metadata. Then they get stored on an external drive to be preserved. A "working copy" will be copied to my computer for further post processing.

You have many options for which tags you want to use, but I always tag mine with "object name" being {filename}. That will be the same filename the "negative" is stored as, so no matter how the file name might get changed later, I can always look at the IPTC data and see the name of the original.

I also tag every photo with "location" - example Playa del Carmen or Mojave Desert, the photographer's name, and "source" being which camera was used - example Olympus TG-5 or Canon 50D

As long as EXIF and IPTC metadata is not deleted, I can always easily find the original negative regardless how it may have been renamed, see where it was taken, which camera was used, and who was using it.

Dick

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

Downloader Pro

Renames files as you download them from the card to your computer. You can set up a template to make it easier. You can also have it download the files to a folder with a meaningful name and place the raw and jpg files in separate subfolders.

Once the files are downloaded with revised names you can go ahead and use RFV.

magpix Loc: St. Michaels, MD

As a retired photojournalist and now avid fine art shooter, I continue to rely on Photo Mechanic to import and then cull every shoot. It is extremely fast and very easy to use. The program has a number of ways of creating folders for each shoot, so you can organize things the way you feel best. After rating my "selects" I import them into LR. This system saves a lot of time, because importing hundreds or thousands of images directly into LR is a time consuming process. Photo Mechanic is much, much faster. The folder structure automatically remains the same during import, but after import I then use LR if I want to move images to other folders. (That's very important, because LR would not know where the images are if they are later moved my Photo M echanic.) Setting up the preferences correctly, the color and star ratings used in Photo Mechanic are translated into LR. After the LR import and after backing up these selects, I then simply filter the non-selects in Photo Mechanic and delete them from my hard drive, as I see no reason to save unwanted images. There are many good tutorials for Photo Mechanic, and the support from the developer is excellent. If you capture hundreds or thousands of images in a shoot, I highly recommend it.

jteee Loc: Montana

I introduced Photo Mechanic into my work flow several months ago, at the suggestion of a professional Bird Photographer, and like it a lot. Has significantly sped up reviewing/culling photos for importing into Lightroom. Allows me to do several passes at differing zooms, tag, flag, etc. Was a very satisfying addition to my routine.

Blair Shaw Jr Loc: Dunnellon,Florida

Thanks Paul.......I took a peek and it's impressive and a bargain as well.

I would definitely give it a shot. Anything that saves me time & effort is a worthwhile path .

uhaas2009

I love it. Got this recommended from a press photographer. For me it feels lot easier especially my hardware isn’t the strongest

photoman43

I do not use Photo Mechanic yet, but I am very likely to try it out soon.

Here are links to two photographers that I trust that use it. The links explain why. Simply stated, PM allows them to preview lots of images quickly, select the best, and then import them in other programs like Adobe LR, Bridge, PS etc.

My guess is that sample workflows are available at Camera Bits site (That's PM.) Also note that the current version in PM 6 I believe.

https://luminescentphoto.com/blog/2013/04/12/how-photo-mechanic-saved-me-from-hours-of-image-review-in-lightroom/

https://www.moosepeterson.com/blog/my-workflow-18/

https://www.moosepeterson.com/blog/my-workflow/

https://www.moosepeterson.com/blog/photo-mechanic-6-more-than-just-an-upgrade/

grberg

I’ve used PM for a couple of years and it works well for quickly going through a large set of photos. I come home from grandkids’ games (soccer, little league, etc.) with 300-500 or more pics. I dump them into a file and save it on an external hard drive. I then run that desktop file through PM and in a few minute can pick out the few that I want to save in my computer. There are no doubt several programs that do much the same thing, but I like the ease of quickly scrolling through lots of pics and simply tapping a button as I go through them to save the ones I want. The saved pics are then easy to transfer into the second and final file.

mborn Loc: Massachusetts

My friend Lou uses it to cull. I have tried it, it works. But I still download to LR and cull from there