Photo Mechanic Review

This is my unbiased review of Photo Mechanic, a piece of software indispensable to thousands of professional photographers over the years. Photo Mechanic, now in its sixth iteration, remains the fastest way to browse and import your photos in 2023.

Photo Mechanic Overview

Every photographic workflow has four or five stages. The first step is planning and organization, which is not required for all types of photography. The photo shoot, or the actual making of the photos, comes next. Following that, you must review and manage all the images to select, mark, rate, and so on.

After that, you proceed to post-production or photo retouching. Finally, there is another aspect of management in which you must resize, watermark, export, send to the client, post or publish, and so on. Most photographers dislike the two parts involving management the most. That is why good browser software is required, and Photo Mechanic comes in handy.

What is Photo Mechanic?

Camera Bits Photo Mechanic is a Mac and Windows media browser that allows you to manage your files.
It allows you to view and compare your images quickly. You can also tag and vote on them, add metadata, export for sharing in various sizes, watermark them, and manage a large number of photographs with ease.

Because the program’s purpose is to speed up the workflow for culling and handling large amounts of files, almost any photographer can benefit from it.

There is now an upgraded version called Photo Mechanic Plus, which includes all of the original’s features and speed, as well as a powerful image database for indexing, finding, and managing hundreds of thousands of images.

Photo Mechanic features review

Browsing

When you launch Photo Mechanic, you must select the source folder, which can be something on your computer or a plug-in memory card. Then launch a Contact Sheet.

Even when working with Raw files, the process is impressive. This is due to Photo Mechanic generating preview images from the JPEG embedded in your Raw.

To view a single image, double-click it to open the Preview Window. You can then use the arrow keys to navigate through all of your files. This process is also silky smooth, and because the images are JPEGs, they load instantly.

To zoom in and check for critical focus or specific details, use the keyboard shortcut Z.

Keep in mind that while the JPEG version is faster, the resolution is reduced. When you zoom in, the image may appear pixelated and with jagged edges. It will not look like that when you open your original file.

When shooting tethered or wirelessly, you can also use Live Ingest. Following that, the images are imported, copied, and deleted from the source.

Keywording

Adding keywords is a necessary step in managing a photo library. This is true for both enthusiasts and professionals, so make the process as efficient and ‘painless’ as possible.

In Photo Mechanic, press the ‘I’ key when an image is selected, or click the I icon on the photo to do so. This will open the IPTC info window, where you can enter the keywords you want. To speed up the process, use the arrow keys to navigate to the next image.

You can also keyword in bulk. To begin, select multiple images from the contact sheet, or press Cmd+A to select all images from the contact sheet. Then, press Cmd+I to open the IPTC window and enter the keywords shared by all of the images you’ve chosen.

Variables are another useful keywording tool. For example, if you’re organizing an archive and want to search for images by year, just type year4 (the ‘4’ formats the year with four digits). You’ll add the metadata’s creation date as a keyword this way. You can do this with any type of information, such as focal length, aperture, and so on.

Captioning

I don’t use this function very often, but I can see how it could be useful. Sports photographers who need to caption the players in their images, or celebrity photographers who work with a large number of VIP names and need to include partners and titles in their captions… It would undoubtedly save them a lot of typing time.

You only need to do the work once with Photo Mechanic’s caption replacement in a separate file where you assign codes. The program then recognizes the code you type and replaces it with the full information assigned to it on the file.

Sharing

After you’ve finished culling and managing the metadata, the selected images will usually need to be edited in a photo editor. You can send them directly from Photo Mechanic to Lightroom, Photoshop, or your preferred software. It can be linked to up to ten pixel-editing programs.

You can also send files to clients with specific dimensions, resolutions, and even a watermark without having to save multiple versions on your computer. There is also the option to save them if desired.

This feature is useful not only for clients, but it’s also a good way to manage your portfolios and websites because you can FTP to some of the most popular providers like Smugmug, Zonefolio, and others.

You no longer need to save multiple versions of the same file in original, low-res, size x, size y, watermarked, non-watermarked, and so on, saving you a lot of storage space and future headaches.

Photo Mechanic Review | Pricing

Photo Mechanic, in my opinion, is an excellent piece of software that is well worth the price. It saves you a significant amount of time, and as they say, time is money. More importantly, it saves you a lot of time, which is the most valuable aspect for me.

For $139, you get the most recent version’s full license. If you already own a previous version, you can simply purchase the update for $89. Other programs are constantly urging you to update both their software and your operating system. Photo Mechanic does not do this, which I appreciate.

It makes the price even more reasonable because you know you’ll be able to use it for a long time, providing excellent value for money. Is it a good investment for you? That depends on how many images you manage and how much organization you do with them.

To see if Photo Mechanic is right for you, you can download a 30-day free trial – no credit card required. You don’t even need to create an account; simply provide an email address and they’ll send you the download link.

Photo Mechanic Review | Final thoughts

Anyone who needs to work with numerous images should definitely consider using Photo Mechanic, especially if they have a tight deadline. The program, in my opinion, is ideally suited to the requirements of photographers and picture editors. The features supplied by Camera Bits demonstrate their understanding of their target market.

Additionally, they are approachable and receptive to recommendations. You can post ideas on the feature request board there and check the status of other users’ proposals to see whether they’re being considered or not.

In this manner, you will be able to determine whether anything that might improve your workflow is missing and will be fixed.