Tag Archives: Photo Mechanic

Tips and Tricks

How Photo Mechanic saved me from hours of image review in Lightroom

Green honeycreeper, Trinidad, West Indies. When photographing birds, judging sharpness of the eye is the first step in deciding whether to keep or reject an image.
Green honeycreeper, Trinidad, West Indies. When photographing birds, judging sharpness of the eye is the first step in deciding whether to keep or reject an image.

Adobe Photoshop Lightroom has a lot of image management strengths, not the least of which is its catalog database. However, there are some things that Lightroom doesn’t do quickly, and one of those things is previewing images at 100%. To view images at 100% in Lightroom, you need to render 1:1 previews from the RAW files, and that takes serious time. When you’re trying to judge images for critical sharpness, you need to view them quickly, make a yes or no decision, and move on. That’s exactly where a browser like Photo Mechanic can help out and save you serious time.

I had to review over 2500 images from a recent birding trip to Trinidad.
I had to review over 2500 images from a recent birding trip to Trinidad.

I came back from a bird photography trip to Trinidad with over 2500 captures. That’s a lot of shots to review, especially when you have to judge sharpness at 100% quickly.

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News, Workshops/Training

Workshops are underway!

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I’ve been busy in my virtual classroom; the first two of my spring workshops are now complete.  We had a great turnout, and the attendees all learned a lot about Capture NX2 and Photo Mechanic.  There are still more workshops left on my schedule, so if you missed out, you can still get in on one of the upcoming dates. In even better news, participants who have headset mics for their computers can now bypass the telephone altogether and join the teleconference from their computers.  This is sure to be great for international participants!

If you have a need for personal attention and support, I may be available for one on-one consulting.  I’m happy to help you work on your own images, learn Capture NX2, or whatever other topic you might have about your Nikon workflow.  Click here for mentoring rates and details.

It’s also software update time.  Today, Adobe formally announced Creative Suite 5, which includes updates to Photoshop, Acrobat, Dreamweaver, Illustrator, and InDesign.  I’m mostly looking forward to native 64-bit support for these applications in Mac OS; something that has been lacking for some time.

Tips and Tricks

Tip: Adding a signature to your images with Photo Mechanic

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Photo Mechanic 4.6.1 (still in public beta at this time, but available for trial download from Camerabits) offers a new watermarking feature that allows you to put a watermark image on exported images.  I’ve adapted this technique to put my signature on images that I can export as JPEGs directly from my NEFs without having to go through Photoshop first.

Continue reading Tip: Adding a signature to your images with Photo Mechanic →