Why Photo Mechanic > Lightroom…

fortunately, lua is a really easy scripting language (or so it seems at first glance). i’ll see if i can write some plugins over the next couple weeks.

Tyler, thanks for posting this. I’ve forwarded this along to my colleagues on the Lightroom team.

Comment to Eric…. As an early beta tester of Lightroom 1 and a constant comment contributor in LR 2, I focused my attention on metadata and keywording issues with little if any results. I find this extremely frustrating since Adobe’s approach to LR was to obtain user input from the community yet it chose to either ignore input on this topic, thought they had a better way or had higher priorities. This input included personal meetings with staff.

I hope they finally get the message on this topic.

Thanks for the post

Whoa, really a great post. Very insightful into the world of photography and archiving. I’ve always enjoyed military photos in particular and seeing this process was incredible. I hope you keep up the great work and hopefully your requests to light room will be added as legit features. It’s so frustrating when a great program won’t do “simple” stuff. But really, great post and I’m looking forward to reading more on your blog.

Earl,

I agree with you, and the same was true with betas for Bridge. Metadata has simply not been a high priority with Adobe, which is why I’ve also stuck with Photo Mechanic. This blog post by Tyler is a brilliant side-by-side comparison that really does a good job of highlighting the differences in metadata handling between LR and PM – and the deficiencies in LR (and by extension, Bridge). Currently, PM exists because it fills a large void. As a stock photographer, 50% of my “image value” also depends on metadata. Right now, LR and Bridge just don’t cut it.

Bravo, Tyler. Job well done.

Tyler,

Great post, I hope the LR team reads it!
Why not to catch the image date from EXIF, like PM?

Excellent, excellent, excellent! Hopefully Adobe is going to pay attention and start putting some serious effort into this. It just can’t be that hard compared to raw developing.

Also we need much more powerful file renaming capabilities like search and replace, string replacements, etc. All the usual stuff in any free file renaming utility.

My LR/Transporter plugin should solve the last one of your issues.

Find and replace looks like a good feature that I could add too…

With respect to the find/change request, I’ve found that you can quickly rename a tag in the Keywords field, and it automatically updates that tag on all the relevant photos without too much of a problem!
In the example of soldiers – just type in ’soldiers’ in the keyword find panel, right-click (yes, I’m a PC user) or hold down the equivalent of the CTRL key when clicking on the keyword (for Mac users) and then just change the keyword using ‘rename’.
It really doesn’t take that long.
Of course, if you just want to change a few of the pics labelled ’soldiers’, and not the others, then a find/change would be useful!

Would have to agree with everything you have said here. I absolutely love Photo Mechanic and now that I have it could never function without it. Beyond those points listed, I would say that the one thing Photo Mechanic does best is that it is fast! I can start reviewing and tagging images while images are being ingested. Huge timesaver and indispensable.

Great site this blog.tylerginter.com and I am really pleased to see you have what I am actually looking for here and this this post is exactly what I am interested in. I shall be pleased to become a regular visitor

Technically, this post is thorough and thoughtful. Hopefully it will be considered for Lightroom 3. As a Marine, I have to chuckle. Is it possible that the image of the flag raising at Iwo Jima would never have seen the light of day if current bureaucratic regulations were in effect?

What program/system do you all use to search the metadata over a network or through a server? Is there something as stable and less expensive than Canto Cumulus? I think Lightroom 2 can search but it has an image cap, right?

Very interesting site, Hope it will always be alive!

Very interesting blog, also very curious how you managed to customize the IPTC field names in Photo Mechanic. Can you tell us how to do this.
Would be very grateful

The field names in Photo Mechanic were customized specifically for the military. You can customize them in Lightroom though if you watch my video tutorial here: http://blog.tylerginter.com/?p=41

Tyler,

I couldn’t agree with you more and I’ve made similar recommendations to Adobe from the beginning of the LR Beta Program. I also suggest you take a look at FotoStation from http://www.fotoware.com. It already does everything you ask of LR and more, has no size limits and should be adaptable to any large-scale needs you can through at it. Although PM is used by many photographers, Fotostation (at least here in Europe) is the de facto standard of newspapers, agencies and archives. Check it out.

Thank you. These information are very helpful for learner like me who is trying to build good digital photo archive system here in NEPAL.

I could agree in 100%.
He’s the best part if this.

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Awesome post Lt. You should articles for magazines or online reviews of media products.

Great post LT Tyler! I would like to address the Marine’s question about the Iwo Jima image, and would it have made it? Decisions on image use are not solely based on metadata, but more on image content. So yes, it would have been selected and published, but if the metadata was missing our staff would have to take time to get it, because later in the image’s life cycle that becomes very important. So the process of having the photographer enter the metadata, and hence the need for great metadata tools, is a force multiplier for the Pentagon staff. Take a look at http://www.defenseimagery.mil, that is where the public can access current military images. If you are military go to https://dams.defenseimagery.mil/ for even more (a CAC is required).

WOW!…and I’m totally speechless. Had no idea about any of this. Thanks so much for enlightening me!

Hi Tyler,

Have become a great fan of yours since I visited you page.

I have a request if you can help me out in this.

I have PM but it doesnt have the field named “People”. In my project workflow its required to add the names of the prominent persons seen in the image. Is there any way by which we can customise PM and add this field in the PM.

Your help in this will be highly appreciated.

Danny

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Do any of your observations and conclusions change with Lightroom 3?