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- Graham
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This is aimed at existing Photo Mechanic users who, like me, may have questioned their need for PM since its change to a subscription pricing model.
If I were a professional sports, wildlife, or events photographer, I wouldn't think twice about the cost: PM should easily pay for itself on the first job of the year. But, as a retired amateur photographer, I baulked at the cost, even though PM had been at the centre of my workflow since 2011.
For the last year, I have tried to work without PM. I don't take large numbers of pictures, but I add location metadata to every image, along with some keywords, and, for my wildlife pictures, species names. PM made this a fast and relatively painless process for me.
My basic setup was PM, plus Lightroom and Neofinder for cataloguing, and C1 sessions for processing. Since establishing that workflow, LR has improved as a raw processor and C1 has improved as a catalogue (i.e. it was no longer unusable).
I do a lot with PM: ingest files, folder and file renaming, adding and editing metadata, code replacement, autocomplete etc etc. but for the last year I've stopped using PM and spent about 6 months trying to centre my workflow around LR, and six months doing the same with C1.
As part of this, I have tried to fill in the obvious gaps by using Typinator/Text Expander, Hazel and Keyboard Maestro (and Fast Raw Viewer, but I used this anyway). I've also looked into using Bridge and XNView.
After spending hours and hours trying to get a non-PM workflow to work like PM, I am spending much more time at the computer, working far less efficiently and getting inferior outcomes. Even worse is that my clunkier multi-program approach means I am regularly putting off adding some metadata elements, and I am now months behind.
Although the differences between the different options are small, once added together, they end up making Photo Mechanic indispensable for me. Now retired; I want to spend less time at the computer, not more, and I am unwilling to compromise on the efficient, easy to use, and time-saving metadata and file management tools that PM provides.
With some relief, as I have found it hard work living without PM, I signed up for a subscription this morning. Camera Bits says they have released their last update for the old perpetual license version of PM6 and suggest, based on Apple's proposed changes, it won't run on the next version of MacOS.
Of course, the benefits of PM will vary depending on how you use it. If you are simply using it to ingest files and as a fast browser, without using its file and metadata management tools, all the options I have tried worked well enough.
But my experience has shown that if you are baulking over the subscription, it's not that easy to find an alternative to PM.
If I were a professional sports, wildlife, or events photographer, I wouldn't think twice about the cost: PM should easily pay for itself on the first job of the year. But, as a retired amateur photographer, I baulked at the cost, even though PM had been at the centre of my workflow since 2011.
For the last year, I have tried to work without PM. I don't take large numbers of pictures, but I add location metadata to every image, along with some keywords, and, for my wildlife pictures, species names. PM made this a fast and relatively painless process for me.
My basic setup was PM, plus Lightroom and Neofinder for cataloguing, and C1 sessions for processing. Since establishing that workflow, LR has improved as a raw processor and C1 has improved as a catalogue (i.e. it was no longer unusable).
I do a lot with PM: ingest files, folder and file renaming, adding and editing metadata, code replacement, autocomplete etc etc. but for the last year I've stopped using PM and spent about 6 months trying to centre my workflow around LR, and six months doing the same with C1.
As part of this, I have tried to fill in the obvious gaps by using Typinator/Text Expander, Hazel and Keyboard Maestro (and Fast Raw Viewer, but I used this anyway). I've also looked into using Bridge and XNView.
After spending hours and hours trying to get a non-PM workflow to work like PM, I am spending much more time at the computer, working far less efficiently and getting inferior outcomes. Even worse is that my clunkier multi-program approach means I am regularly putting off adding some metadata elements, and I am now months behind.
Although the differences between the different options are small, once added together, they end up making Photo Mechanic indispensable for me. Now retired; I want to spend less time at the computer, not more, and I am unwilling to compromise on the efficient, easy to use, and time-saving metadata and file management tools that PM provides.
With some relief, as I have found it hard work living without PM, I signed up for a subscription this morning. Camera Bits says they have released their last update for the old perpetual license version of PM6 and suggest, based on Apple's proposed changes, it won't run on the next version of MacOS.
Of course, the benefits of PM will vary depending on how you use it. If you are simply using it to ingest files and as a fast browser, without using its file and metadata management tools, all the options I have tried worked well enough.
But my experience has shown that if you are baulking over the subscription, it's not that easy to find an alternative to PM.
