Photo Mechanic is a photographer's image browser tool. It may be the answer for professional digital photographers looking for a fast and easy-to-use image browser for digital camera files.

Photo Mechanic is a standalone image browser that lets you view your digital photos with convenience and speed.

Photo Mechanic's innovative batch captioning, renaming, speedy browsing, and Photoshop connectivity features have made it the choice of thousands of photojournalists and professional photographers worldwide.

Now Carbonized for native Mac OS X and OS 9 operation, and optimized for use with professional cameras from Nikon, Canon, and Olympus, Photo Mechanic has become the standard tool for digital image browsing.

Photo Mechanic displays the "thumbnails" of photos on a camera disk or folder in a familiar "contact sheet" display windows. You can quickly rotate, preview, copy, delete, tag, rename, and add caption / keyword (IPTC news record) information to photos both individually and in batches.

Photo Mechanic helps you find the best photo amongst several similar shots with its preview display that lets you flip through a group of selected photos at high resolution. Photo Mechanic can then pass the photos you select on to Adobe Photoshop for image retouching.

Here are some key features of "Photo Mechanic":

Fast Sort
· Photo Mechanic helps you quickly find your best shots. Custom sorting methods are available for your particular workflow. Multithreaded software works in the background to keep ahead of you, so images appear blazingly fast. You can view your originals full screen, compare similar shots side by side, delete the bad shots, tag photos while watching a slide show, and sort your keepers into multiple folders.

Fast Workflow - Work with batches of Photos to:

Import
· Photo Mechanic's powerful Ingest utility lets you edit your photos while they are being copied from the memory card. Multiple Ingests allow for editing several jobs at the same time. Read the images from the card, flatten the directory structure, apply IPTC stationery (city, state, photographer's name, copyright, etc.), create a backup on a separate disk and rename your files - all in one step.

Edit
· You can quickly rotate, preview, copy, delete, tag, watermark, rename, resize, and add IPTC meta-data to photos both individually and in batches. Adjust capture dates and times, change a files resolution, or embed an ICC profile into your JPEGs. Lock previews and pan them around together to compare details efficiently.

Annotate
· Photo Mechanic makes it easy to add common "IPTC" (or meta-data) information (like city, state, keywords, and caption) to groups of photos at once. Reduce time and improve accuracy when captioning files by using the Code Replacement feature.

Output
· Create web galleries, print contact sheets, transfer photos to an FTP server or upload them to PhotoShelter, Digital Railroad, and the new PhotoShelter Collection uploader. Send photos to your clients via email, or archive your keepers by burning them to CDs or DVDs.
· Configure it your way - Put image meta-data to work to customize your results. Do you want to include shutter speed, aperture and caption information with your prints or web page (and sometimes the date and city, but never the time)? Rename files by photographer & state? Sort photos by city or date? Automatically convert the color profile for web photos so they look their best and stay small? Configure your own preferences or stay with the friendly defaults.
· Rotate your JPEG files without loss of quality.
· Display file Exif information.
· Tag your files during a slideshow presentation.
· The Structured Keywords feature uses a hierarchically arranged controlled vocabulary (CV).
· Use the Show Map command to plot a photo with embedded GPS coordinates in a window using Google maps.
· Sharpen thumbnails for display.
· Full support for IPTC4XMP core specifications - UTF-8 character support.
· Assign a Color Class or 5-star rating.
· Inline spell checking helps you create accurate IPTC captions.
· Write IPTC captions in your choice of language.

Limitations:

· You may use Photo Mechanic as a trial for 20 days.

What's New in This Release: [ read full changelog ]

· (Mac) Most image rendering operations such as Save As, Upload (e.g. FTP), Export, Send as Email, Print, etc are now consistent with settings for choosing RAW or JPEG when in RAW+JPEG mode, and when RAW for choosing to render RAW if possible or to always use the RAW preview. This is particularly important for Nikon NEF files that have been saved from Capture NX and have an updated preview.
· For RAW files there are now two separate crop rectangles, one for the rendered RAW and one for the RAW preview. Currently this only affects Mac users who can use ImageIO to render their RAW format. If the RAW preview is "representative" of the RAW data then the two crops will be kept in sync. But for NEF files saved from Capture NX that have a crop applied, the cropped embedded preview doesn't represent the RAW file's full image area and so the two crops are kept separate.
· Fixed an issue where Tagging, Color Class, and Rating would not "stick" depending on the file format and IPTC/XMP preferences settings.
· Fixed an issue where the Tag, Color Class, and Rating would "stick" when editing a photo in an external editor (such as Photoshop) when the user's Files Preferences for "Add tag, color class, and rating to IPTC/XMP" was set to "Never".
· When extracting JPEGs from RAW files that have GPS coordinates, fixed the formatting of the GPS "reference" tags for latitude (N, S), longitude (E, W), altitude (above/below sea level), and speed. Some sites such as Flickr and SmugMug weren't recognizing these reference tags the way they were being written.
· GPS Exif tags are now added to TIFF files and TIFF-based RAW files when adding GPS info to photos.
· Live Ingest tasks now maintain a private copy of the IPTC Stationery Pad so it will remain consistent throughout the live ingest process.
· Fixed setting of path for Live Ingest snapshots.
· (Mac) Fixed an issue where performing multiple sequential Ingests to the same destination folder would open the folder multiple times in different tabs.
· (Mac) Fixed an issue where a contact sheet viewing a server that was unmounted would cause the server to automatically remount.
· Most upload templates now support dual concurrent transfers for increased performance. This feature can be disabled by a preference (e.g. when using very low bandwidth connections).
· Moved uploader destination interface to top of dialog for a better user experience.
· For HTTP uploaders, fixed MIME multipart syntax to conform with RFC1521.
· Upload logs now expand variables in the upload path for FTP log entries.
· The shortcut key (Option on Mac, Shift on Windows) to skip the Upload dialog is now functional for all uploaders.
· Stalled upload transfers can now be restarted.
· Added a preference to set the time delay before an upload is considered "stalled."
· Fixed issues where the destination folder path for FTP and SFTP uploads was not properly restored from snapshots or when using a dated folder in the connection setting.
· Added code to re-import FTP connection settings from version 4.5 or earlier preferences.
· IPTC Snapshots are now Exportable/Importable.
· Fixed Import Preferences issue when trying to import exported IPTC popup menu lists.
· Added Upload template for DFStudio LINK.
· Improved usefulness and robustness of Zenfolio uploader. New galleries can be created. Collections are not listed as Galleries. Private and Locked Galleries can now be destinations for uploading. Users can now create Galleries under specific Groups. User quotas are now checked for enough space before uploading.
· Improved uploaders for Flickr, SmugMug, and Gallery2 by adding abilities (when possible) to create new "galleries" and automatically select newly created "galleries", and to provide more info on communication errors.
· Files uploaded to Exposure Manager are uploaded to the proper location instead of the "root" of the user's account. Uploads now notify the server to initiate an upload job when the transfer queue is empty instead of notifying the server after each file.
· Fixed incorrect destination file reporting in the upload log files for several uploader templates.
· Fixed file extension sometimes changing from JPG back to the file's original RAW extension when retrying stalled upload items.
· Added ability to move image (logo) to edge when applying watermarks.
· Added option to "Always update XMP Label when changing Color Class" to the Files tab of the Preferences dialog.
· Optimized Upload Status Indicator refreshing. No longer updates more often than necessary to improve performance.
· Save As and FTP As using RAW file previews as a source now crops correctly based-upon the available JPEG preview.
· Save As dialog no longer has a long delay when starting the save operation.
· (Mac) Fixed "move" option in Copy Photos dialog when moving photos from one drive to another; the photos were not being deleted from the source drive.
· JPEG size estimates are now more accurate when applying crops on RAW preview source images.
· Loupe mode in the Contact Sheet window now reserves enough space for 100% image and thumbnails that are on the screen (to prevent redrawing issues). This may temporarily exceed the user's requested memory cache size during the viewing of the zoomed image.
· Fixed an issue when cropping or rotating a RAW+JPEG pair when the JPEG was hard-rotated and the RAW was soft-rotated.
· (Mac) Fixed an issue where the right side of a two-up preview would sometimes not be as sharp as the left side when scaling to fit (depending on window layout and zoom ratio).
· (Mac) Fixed a memory leak when adding Finder icons during Copy, Save As, or Ingest.
· The user is now prompted if they try to upload with the "Save copy of transmitted photos" option checked but the folder no longer exists on disk.
· Temporary files used in the Upload process are deleted after they are successfully uploaded.
· Fixed constrained cropping issues when dragging the crop outside of the preview area.
· (Mac) Fixed issue with Spotlight searches sometimes crashing when Spotlight returned results with empty paths.
· Send Photos via Email with RAW photos now uses the embedded JPEG dimensions properly.
· Send Photos via Email now evaluates variables in the To:, Cc: and Bcc: fields.
· Send Photos via Email to a custom size now allows scaling to arbitrary aspect ratios.
· The IPTC Info dialog now checks for changes when moving through photos (Prev/Next) and warns the user that there are unsaved changes.
· Applying the IPTC Stationery Pad no longer changes IPTC date in XMP, and the time zone data is no longer adjusted to be the computer's local time zone.
· Setting the time in IPTC Info dialog no longer adjusts time zone to be the computer's local time zone.
· Adjusting the IPTC time in the "Adjust Capture Dates and Times" dialog no longer adjusts the time zone to be the computer's local time zone.
· Adjust Capture Dates and Times now allows IPTC dates back to the year 1753, although file system dates do not go back beyond 1971.
· The Apply checkbox for the Country Code combo box is now set to on when the Country Code field is changed in the IPTC Stationery Pad.
· Invalid filename characters are now filtered out when creating Snapshot names.
· Restoring Snapshots in the Save As dialog now handles changes in the box size units correctly.
· Using the Save As context menu in Contact Sheets with no photos selected now works with RAW files.
· Added ISO criteria to Search panel.
· Fixed a crash problem that could occur when clicking on the Auto button in the Import GPS Coordinates dialog when no GPS logs had been loaded. The Auto button is now disabled until GPS logs have been loaded.
· (Mac) Fixed a crash problem that could occur when a large number of files are selected in the Finder and are dragged onto the Photo Mechanic application icon in the Dock.
· (Mac) Epson ERF RAW files from cameras that didn't include a JPEG preview now render on Mac OS X when supported.
· (Mac) Flash cards mounted with the same name can now be opened in Photo Mechanic via the Finder. This is a workaround for a Mac OSX bug where aliases to volumes with the same name always resolved to the first volume of the group.