Photo Mechanic

I’m currently using Lightroom and I’m very happy with it, one problem though, is that when a lot of photos are loaded into it, it requires a LOT of memory

Loading images to 100% also takes a fair amount of time, even with a decent computer.

I’ve heard a lot of good things about Photo Mechanic, and just downloaded the time-limited trial version today to try it out…

There’s a thread discussing the same matter here: http://www.lightstalkers.org/which_one

This is quite an old thread, but I thought I’d throw in my own experiences:

I currently use both Apple’s Aperture and Photo Mechanic, depending on the assignment/situation.

For long term assignments, ones that might mean thousands of files that need massive categories/tagging and searching these, I use Aperture. For daily assignments/short term projects, I use Photo Mechanic.

I’ve tried Aperture for sports and daily, and it just can’t match the speed of PM for putting photos out on a quick deadline. While PM can’t even hold a candle to how easily it is to group long term assignments.

P.S. I rarely ever do any editing in Aperture, I simply use its category systems.

I have used PM for more than six years on my daily assignments. It’s a very fast browser and I find it very useful when captioning images, particular sports etc with tight dead lines. I use it in conjunction with Photoshop and a couple of scripts.

For non-daily news, I tend to use Aperture, but when it comes to quick photos, PM is great! I love the spotlight feature in it as well.

…m

I used to use bridge and nothing else but after discovering photo mechanic I have started to use it on a more regular basis.

They are both very very similar in their abilities,

Bridge has the advantages of being free with photoshop and also for doing mass RAW conversions

PM has spell check for captioning and is a bit faster which is good on my old laptop.