Version 6 of Photo Mechanic media browser is shipping now. The long-awaited update is a 64-Bit application and offers a 2 to 3 times increase in viewing speed. Other new features include support for fullscreen viewing, ingesting from a selection, improved crop and slide show tools and the option of uploading to Dropbox and Facebook.

Photo Mechanic 6 is available now priced at $139. There is a free 30-day trial available and upgrades for eligible owners of previous versions at $89.

Camer Bits has also announced that purchasers of Photo Mechanic 6 will also be invited to a public beta of their catalog feature add on when it is released on 2 April.

Press release

Hello everyone,

We are pleased to announce the first release of Photo Mechanic 6 for macOS and Windows.

• macOS
• Windows

On macOS, Photo Mechanic 6 requires Mac OS X 10.10 or higher If you are using a Mac with macOS 10.9.5 or older, you will need to upgrade to macOS 10.10 or higher to use Photo Mechanic 6.

On Windows, Photo Mechanic 6, requires a 64-bit edition of Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10. If you are using Windows Vista, XP, NT, 2000, ME, 98 or 95, you will need to upgrade to Windows 7, Windows 8, or Windows 10 to use Photo Mechanic 6.

Version Information

Version 6.0 (Initial Release) Build 2725

• Photo Mechanic is now a 64-bit application, which allows more and better caching of images to keep you working at your fastest and handle large high megapixel images. NOTE: Apple has said 64-bit will be a requirement for macOS 10.14 (Mojave) although their current public betas of 10.14 do not force this but instead give a one-time warning.
• Internal image caching improvements increase thumbnail/preview generation speed by approximately 2-3x (depending on various factors including source media).
• Ingest from Selection: all the power of Ingest but from a selection of images on a card or disk.
• Reverse Geocoding: using GPS coordinates embedded in your photos, insert place information metadata (city, state, country, etc.) into your images.
• Fullscreen support on macOS and Windows for both the Contact Sheet and Preview windows (including both at the same time on different monitors).
• Session Save and Restore: Photo Mechanic can optionally restore all Contact Sheet tabs and all of their settings that were in place when you last quit.
• Navigator and Favorites are now threaded, so Photo Mechanic doesn’t have to wait for slow external drives or network volumes to load.

IPTC/XMP:

• Reading of IPTC vs. XMP metadata is now handled automatically. XMP is preferred over IPTC, but any IPTC fields are missing in XMP are now included. For RAW files with both embedded XMP and an XMP sidecar file, the most recently modified XMP will be loaded. This is consistent with Adobe’s handling of conflicting IPTC/XMP metadata.
• The XMP Label (a string) can either be synchronized or not synchronized with the color class value (for Photo Mechanic this is a number from 0-8). By default, when synchronized, if the XMP Label field matches one of the values in the Preferences list of Labels, then the color class will be assigned. If unsynchronized, then the XMP Label field string is independent of the Photo Mechanic color class value, and the Label field can be edited directly in the Metadata (IPTC) Info dialog.
• Added Modifier Key Toggle to the “Copy to ‘Location Shown’ table” button which changes to “Copy to Loc Shown/Location” and instead copies to the other location fields/table.

Code Replacement improvements:

• Hot Codes!
• When pasting text containing Code Replacements, all Codes are evaluated at once.

New Render Cache:

• Caches slow-loading image types for faster subsequent access.
• Allows previewing of RAW files via the free Adobe DNG Converter.
• Plugin architecture for other third-party RAW renderers as they become available.

New metadata variables:

• {label} or {labl}: XMP Label for photo. This is the actual value stored in XMP, not the value interpreted by looking up the color class number (0-8) into the Preferences array of color class label strings (shown by the {colorclass} variable). This is useful when the XMP Label field is not synchronized with the color class.

Crop tool improvements:

• Crop View mode: allows you to see how your rotated crop will turn out. Press ‘p’ to preview a crop quickly.
• “Full Crop” button that starts your crop as a full-size crop that you can then modify.
• Holding down the Shift key while resizing from a corner constrains the crop to the natural ratio of the image being cropped and overrides any default crop constraints.
• Shows a fine grid when rotating crop.
• Settings changes now apply immediately to existing crops.
• Select Cropped command in Contact Sheet.

Slideshow improvements:

• Now has multiple transitions including a cross-fade.
• Allows on-screen soft edits (Adding Tag, Color Class or Star Rating) with visual feedback.
• Supports high DPI screens in full resolution.
• Text alignment options (left, center, right).
• Optionally draw a border around the image.
• Larger Render Text field.
• Added Up and Down arrow keys for advancing or going back a slide.
• Pixel inset option to control overscan on projection.

Find and Replace panel improvements:

• Now allows use of {variables} as replacement text.
• Whole words can be found and replaced.
• Regular Expressions allow for powerful search and replace.

Find panel improvements:

• Whole words can be searched.
• Regular Expressions allow for powerful matching.

Uploaders:

• Facebook uploader
• Dropbox uploader
• Amazon Cloud Drive uploader
• Revised Amazon S3 uploader
• Box.com uploader

Exporters:

• PM Classic exporter has been split up into simpler exporters.
• New Image Gallery exporter.

Miscellaneous:

• Added single-click Zoom toggle option for Previews.
• Mirrored rotation support for thumbnails, previews, and correct cropping. Also, new commands to mirror both vertically and horizontally (NOT FOR JOURNALISM).
• Reassign WAV file to a different photo.
• When updating metadata to JPEG files, Photo Mechanic now do edits on a temporary copy to ensure that any file system errors do not affect the integrity of the photo. This is especially important when editing photos directly off of a flash card (still NOT recommended).
• Added much better error reporting and retry capability.
• Blu-Ray disc burning support.
• Snapshot menus have a new menu item titled “Manage Snapshots” which opens the Finder/Windows Explorer showing the folder containing the snapshots. From there you can copy/rename/delete the snapshots.