Reading Time: 6 minutes

If you were in the press room and watched all the photographers ingest their images, write captions, crop, and upload their pictures to wire services or newspapers, you would find most of them using PhotoMechanic. It costs $150 and works on a PC or a Mac.

Why PhotoMechanic?

The number one reason most use it is speed. It is a stand-alone image browser that is so fast that it is ideal for the pressroom. Most who use it in their workflow ingest their images into this program, and if they need to do more than crop their pictures, they may use PhotoShop or Lightroom to adjust color, burn and dodge, or perform some other image correction.

Many photographers shooting on deadline shoot JPEGs for speed. Some will shoot JPEGs plus RAW and use the RAW to help salvage an image if necessary. Most of these pros nail exposure, focus, and white balance. They also crop or rotate images.

Figure 1

Step One—Ingest

PhotoMechanic allows you to ingest multiple cards at once. Figure 1 shows the screen that lets you customize how you consume. I select the cards and a destination, which is always an external drive. I have it checked that I should eject the cards and only ingest new images when it is done.

Two more things I do before clicking the “Ingest” button is click the renaming of files. Once this is done, it will be the same the next time I ingest this.  By the way, I rename all my images using this code: “{year4}-{month}-{day0} {hour24}-{minute}-{second}.”

The most crucial step that makes this program stand out is the ability to embed text into every image I ingest.

Figure 2

You can see the box that pops up when you click on the IPTC Stationary Pad here in Figure 2.  As you scroll down, there are more fields than you see here.  PhotoMechanic will remember all that you have typed as a default. You can also save these and then load them as needed.  For example, if you shoot for the Associated Press, you have to use specific fields, which will be different from the New York Times. You may also have your own style that you want to use. So, I have saved many different forms to help speed up the filling out of this form.

Once I finish this, I ingest. This will put the same IPTC on every image. This way, when I want to modify the IPTC, I only need to change a few things rather than put everything in the form from scratch.

Step Two—First Edit

I don’t want all the images I just ingested, so I will select the ones I want to keep first.

Figure 3

I look at each image and decide whether I want it. If it is a keeper, I type “T,” and the program checks the box. It is now “tagged.”

Figure 4

I then go and select all the “Untagged” images and select all the photos. Then I push “⌘ Command” and “Delete” to move all of them to the trash.  Once this is done, I show all the images again.

Step Three—Rating

PhotoMechanic lets you rate images using a color code system and/or stars. I primarily use the stars because this is how I marked my contact sheets back in the days of film.

Figure 5

You need to go to Preferences> Accessibility, where I check to use the Star Rating. Now, when I like an image, I can use the keys 1—5 and, if needed, 0 to remove it. A 5 means portfolio quality, and a 1 means it is OK and usable for publication. From there, it is a sliding scale for me.

Step Four—Caption Modification

Now, I go to the bottom right-hand corner of the PhotoMechanics contact sheet and click how many “Stars” I want to show to help narrow down the images I will transmit to the publication or wire service.

Figure 6

Usually, the number of images that sports photographers move from a regular game is about 5 to 6.

Now, I can customize the caption for each photo. PhotoMechanic is cool because it saves keystrokes and helps you correctly spell.  In PM, this is called “Code Replacement.”

Go to Edit>Settings>Set Code Replacements. Here, you will select a previously created TXT file containing the rosters of the players for both teams.

Figure 7

One guy has a website that you can go to and create that file for a small fee, which helps save you tons of time captioning players’ names, positions they play, and numbers.  Here is a link to help you understand how to use this in PhotoMechanic: http://www.codereplacements.com/.

Step Five—Image Correction if Needed

Sometimes, you might need to do some work on the image.  Here, the photographer can press “⌘ Command” and “E” if they have selected an editing program like PhotoShop to change a photo or picture.

Figure 8

To designate a program like PhotoShop, go to Preference>Launching and create the link to the program.

Step Six—Upload for Deadline 

Could you please upload these images? I am doing this for the Associated Press. I have all the FTP information stored in PM, so I select all the photos, right-click, and click “Upload.”

Figure 9

Figure 9 pops up for me. I click send, and the images are off the photo desk.

Step Six—Keywording When Not on Deadline

When I shoot for something other than deadline, I often keyword-image.

Figure 10

To help you with keywords, PM already has a structured list of keywords many stock agencies use, and you can add your keywords.

You can select one or multiple images and then type “⌘ Command” and “I”, which brings up the IPTC pad [figure 2], and then click on the pull-down menu for Keywords see Figure 11.

Figure 11

When you click on it, you will see Figure 10.  This way, you can add things like “African American male” to all the photos you selected at one time. Right next to the keyword field is a box with a + sign next to it [Figure 11]. If you check it, it will keep any keywords already in the image and add them.  This way, you can go through and select all the photos with women and keyword them and then go and + add those photos where there are flowers in them.

Step Six—Upload to PhotoShelter or Stock Agency

Figure 12

PM already has many FTP logins, such as PhotoShelter, Flickr, and SmugMug. In Figure 12, you can see that I have PhotoShelter. I pick a folder or create a gallery to upload the images.

Stanley’s Workflow

1. Ingest to PhotoMechanic
2. Select the keepers
3. Delete all untagged images
4. Import into Lightroom because I am shooting RAW
5. Make all corrections necessary to images
6. Export all images to sRGB JPEGs
7. Open PM 
8. Upload if necessary
9. Burn DVD as needed

Reading Time: 6 minutes

Step 1 Ingest

Step 1 – I ingest the images from my Compact Flash Card or SD Card. My camera settings are RAW, and I normally use the ExpoDisc to get a custom white balance. I also shoot in ADOBE RGB color space. All the settings give me images that are the best possible for editing. Color is almost perfect because of the custom white balance, and pictures can be modified easily since they are in RAW format.

Step 2: Use PhotoMechanic for ingesting software

Step 2 – Ingest using the software PhotoMechanic. Select the card, and then select the destination for all the images.   use + RAW

Step 3 – The destination is an external hard drive

Step 3 – An external hard drive is chosen so that the wear and tear on my computer’s main hard drive is not so severe.  If you shoot as many images as I do, you will burn out a hard drive quickly if you use it all the time.

Step 4 – IPTC Information added

Step 4—Add IPTC information to every photo from the photo shoot. Add the bulk metadata to the caption and keywords, as well as embed credit, copyright, and contact information. Also, add information about the location where the photos were taken.

Step 4: I have saved the IPTC information and tend to load one of the templates saved, so I do not have to put in the basic information each time for a client. I have templates for clients like the Associated Press and for my personal use. I just load the template and make minor changes.

Step 5: I cull the images down.

Step 5 – Culling the images so that I only keep the best or usable photos.

Step 5: I check the select button for those I want to keep

Step 6 – select the Untagged Images

Step 6: I go to View and then select “See only the untagged images,” then delete all of them while keeping the tagged images.

Step 7: Open Lightroom and import from the folder of selected images I created using PhotoMechanic

Step 7: Open Lightroom and import the selected images from Photomechanic. I am just adding these to Lightroom, not copying them.

Step 8 – Select all images and in the Develop Module, I then enable Profile Corrections

Step 8: Enable Profile Corrections for Lenses. This will correct all the aberrations and imperfections known to each lens that I own, giving me the best quality possible.

Step 9 – I sometimes will add a vignette to the images.

Step 9: I like to darken the edges ever so slightly and heavily, depending on the situation. I will select all images and add a PC Vignette 1 for slight use or PC Vignette 2 for heavy use, like for a formal portrait. These are found in the Library Module under Custom.

Step 10 – Adjust image

Step 10 – I adjust the image or images. I will select a group if they are all similar, which saves editing time.  He has a few parts to this:

1. Hold down the “Option Key” while sliding the exposure. You will see the highlights. Try to have no white areas on faces, for example. Play with this to get your desired result.
2. Hold down the “Option Key” and slide the Blacks.  Only if there are black areas do I try to be sure there is a black
3. Adjust the Fill Light to open up the shadows.  
4. I sometimes use Recovery to bring in some highlights that might not have been recovered when I had done the main exposure.  Gain play with this for the desired result.
5. I then usually add some saturation by using the Vibrance slider, usually no more than 35. This will affect everything but people. This is cool because I don’t like to make people red, for example.
6. I may do other fine-tuning beyond, but these five steps are pretty much used every time.

Step 11 Exporting

 Step 11 Exporting.  Go to the Library module, and on the lower left, click export.

Step 12: Exporting choices

Step 12: Select a folder to export. Use + JPEGs. Select sRGB as a standard since it is more usable in more situations. Set quality to 80.

Step 12: I keep images all the same size.

It is very important not to check “minimize Embedded Metadata” because this will remove all the camera data, which many database software programs use to help narrow down the search by the date and time that a photo was taken.

Step 13: Making of DVD/CD. Will drag the folders from here to the Disco Software.

Step 13: Making a DVD: I use the Mac software Disco to burn my DVDs and CDs. This allows me to take very large shoots that need multiple DVDs and spread the project over several discs.

I name the disc by year, month, day, and disc time that I burDisceDiscc

Step 14: Print on the disc using Disc Cover 3

This helps with branding and looking professional for the client.

Step 15: Print using the Epson Photo Stylus R280 Printer

Printing on the DVD with Epson Photo Stylus R280

Step 16: Ingesting into Cumulus

Ingesting into Cumulus from DVD

Cumulus lets me search all the images. I am also searching for all the text I put into the metadata earlier. I can use the Boolean search technique to narrow down my search.

Cumulus helps me later find images using the text search. Once it finds an image, I can see the thumbnail, and it tells me which DVD it is stored on.

Disc is put into a binder in chronological order.

The binder is put onto the shelf.

Summary

I now have a way to find all the images and have them in two places minimally: on the hard drive and on a DVD. I normally also upload these and/or give a Disc to the client. This makes for the third copy. At the end, I will copy the files from the hard drive to another hard drive, giving me, in essence, four copies.

I hope this helps you see my digital workflow.

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Where do my photos go? You can own an awesome camera, but if you haven’t established a workflow for your images, you can lose all of them before you’ve even seen them. 

I can capture all the images on a 1 – 16GB card per camera for most of my photo shoots. However, there are some photo shoots, especially when I travel overseas, where I will not only fill the two cards in the camera but also need to download them and continue to shoot.

Nikon D3s with 2 – 16GB CF cards in the slots

I am using SanDisk Ultra 16GB CF cards in my cameras

When I have to download and reuse the images or use more CF cards, I ingest them on site with my ColorSpace Hyperdrive memory card backup system.

For some photo shoots, I will use one of the Hyperdrives for a day and then pass it along to someone to handle the post-processing one day, while I am shooting and putting more images onto another drive. At the end of that day, I will trade out the drive I gave to the person for processing.

This lets me not only continue to shoot, but if there are problems with the images, I can get a call from the person, and if there is dust on a chip, for example, I would stop shooting and clean the sensor.

The advantage of the Hyperdrives is that I can turn one on, download my images very quickly, and then continue to shoot.

I have two ColorSpace Hyperdrives: the older model, which isn’t UDMA, and the newer UDMA model. I have a 120GB drive in the older model and a 160GB drive in the newer UDMA model.

For those wanting to travel light, the Hyperdrive with a tablet will let you see your images and have a backup of all the pictures with minimal computer equipment.

There are two major times when the speed of your cards will become very noticeable.

1) When you shoot a lot of images quickly, your card will come to a stopping point until the photos can be written to the card. This is when the cheapest, usually not the fastest cards, will affect your ability to continue to work.

2) When you ingest your cards into either your computer or the ColorSpace Hyperdrives, the speed of the cards will determine the transfer time.

Unless these are critical, you can generally shoot a slower card that costs much less.

One last suggestion: Always format your cards in your camera, not on your computer. Cameras are formatted differently and will give you better performance.