This tutorial is so good. Thanks for posting. I just downloaded PM and it's solved a lot of file management headache. LR file management was driving me insane and I was never 100% solid on it as a file mgmt. program. I've used PM for 3 days now and it's easy, clean and super fast, and that's only after 3 days! I'm sold on it.
I have a very similar process, for the most part! I use Lightroom Classic though. And I use the star rating combined with x to decide if i keep them. X is reject, 3 stars or higher is keep (based on instinctive decision). 1 and 2 stars for the not so good but keep just to be sure, if it's not the best but unsure if "grandma Betty" is in a better shot or not. In principle, only 3 stars or higher get tuned. First round of x345 is to quickly eliminate all bugger out of focus derpface images, round 2 is to decide between similar versions (mostly when shot in burst mode). If too many remain, to which conclusion i usually come during editing phase, i go back in for another crutical cull round. I also use the color codes and view filters to help me speedup the culling process. I think I'll have to make a video about this, lol
Thanks for sharing your work flow. Finally i found someones explanation on how this actually works to cull through images quicker. I have seen other videos of how to set up it but showing your thought process finally quantified why it is truly beneficial.
I really find it frustrating when creators explain concepts and then don't show it in action at all. Sure I appreciate free info and free tutorials no matter what but it's way more useful if they actually show me the process!
Thank god I accidently stumbled onto your video clip. I have struggled with this for years and you are the first person with a process and recommendation of a product to satisfy all my photo management problems. I loved your clip and will get the program and follow your process! Thanks for helping.
Outstanding video! I’m new to PM and the capabilities are so numerous that the learning curve is rather steep at first. This video cleared up many questions for me and taught many capabilities I didn’t even know existed. The short cuts are huge time savers if I can just remember them. Thanks again! I AM subscribed! PM is clearly a must have with the new rapid fire cameras. I have PM 6+ and absolutely LOVE the new Organizer. It solved my age old problem of tracking and organizing thousands of images. Best I’ve ever found!
Fantastic lesson for all photographers. It a quick process to get to the key images. A key way to be able to recall the images without pulling ones hair out of one head because of bad memory or messy order of images. Great demo David
Thank you so much for doing this. I have 30K+ photos in various folders with every one imported to LR and/or C1. Most of them rubbish. It's a mess. Definitely downloading Photo Mechanic and implementing a similar workflow. Brilliant.
Fantastic video David! My 'system' is a non'-system. I really appreciate learning about your methodology using PM. You have clarified a lot of my questions re PM. Thanks again!
You asked what our system is. I'm still working on mine. One thing i have decided is that even the first cull needs to be close to full size, and really it always seems to be full-sized. Seeing yours confirmed for me that you need full size to absorb what you've got in a flash: focus, compo, croppable, etc. ... plus those odd ones you keep anyway because your sub concious tells you there is something redeemable there. Right now I'll just move all jpegs to a folder and flash through them. Flash quick one time to esti ate the keeper ratio. Then flash again. So here's the stupid part: To get that 80 out of a 1000 I just jot the 4 digits down. One place on the notepad for keeps. One for images to send to a friend, etc. My new process seems to be hand tagging an auto generated list of numbers by hitting to insert a line at the keeps. Then i run a code algorythm to find and copy those to a final folder.
Great explanation of your work flow. My scale is much smaller, 300-500 a shoot. My first passes start out like yours but quickly turn into examining each photo etc. Now I will incorporate your plan of quickly elimination shots on the first pass that I do not want, then later pass compare more carefully. thanks so much
Extraordinary video as usual. I get so much out of your ask... videos. I've been looking for software like photo mechanic. Thanks for educating me about its capabilities and your system to name, and cull images. Your the best.
what if? the first pass - pictures marked by 1 star. the 2nd pass (and usually it is the final one) - 2 stars. some special pictures which for example need retouching or sth else - 3 stars. and if you select like this, there is no need to create additional copies and waste disk space.
Been using Lightroom for 10 years for all this covering Dog agility / Sports events. Can get upwards of 2k images and this is by far the most painful part of the process. Current workflow is Import from card to a local folder / Import to lightroom / 1st pass is pick reject having to zoom EVERY flicking image to check for focus / 2nd Pass is crop & straighten / 3rd pass is presets & tweaks, 4th pass is evening out exposures were needed / Create destination folders for each event class, sort then publish to my site. By far and away the worst part is 1st phase. The rendering you mentioned is painful beyond belief. Can take me upwards of 3-4 evenings to complete a weekend shoot sometimes longer. A fellow photographer just mentioned PM as we were complaining to each other about the worst part of the job. Now here I am frantically trying to learn it but mightily impressed and unbelievably angry at myself for putting up with the Status Quo for way too long. Thank you so much for a brilliant introduction. Wondering how quick a cropping and straightening session would be!!!
David! I always look forward to your videos because I know I'm gonna learn a lot of useful tips. Thank you for having a great teaching style that works so well. Thank you Adorama for sponsoring these videos.
Nice! If I were to start using Photo Mechanic and this workflow, I would however (to Lightroom) import the "RAW Final Edits" folder, because in the library, I would see it as: > YYYYMMDD Name of Main Folder >> Selects >>> RAW Final Edits This way, you always have a reminder of the origins of the photos, and if someone else needs to work on it, they also know that "Ok, I'm in the RAW Final Edits folder within YYYYMMDD Name of Main Folder > Selects, so maybe if I go into YYYYMMDD Name of Main Folder or Selects, I can browse for other images from that shoot". It just makes more sense to me in order to keep things clear and not having to launch an investigation, whenever I would want to see other photos from the project one day (which, very, very often is the reality).
Hi David - thank you for this instructional video - I bought Photo Mechanic as a result of this video and I have a couple questions: 1) On Ingest I used your method - folder to desktop with date (in the order you suggest) and then RAW file within - when I set Photo Mechanic to Ingest to the RAW folder it makes another folder and named it the date of the next day from what my main folder was (e.g. my main folder was 20210710 and the sub-folder that it created by itself with in the RAW folder that was in the 20210710 was names 20210711). Then when I Ingested my 2nd card and also designated it to the RAW folder PM made another 20210711 folder within the other 20210711 folder that it originally made. As a result I have to manually select all the photos from both 20210711 folders and manually drag them back up into the RAW folder and then delete the two 20210711 folders. This ended up working but was a major drag and significantly slowed my work flow. Is there a selection button that I am missing in the Ingest section that tells PM to either make a sub-folder or in my case to NEVER do this? Please advise. 2) In the metadata section - how do you apply the iptc year etc. Do you just literally type {iptcyear4} or is there a button that sets this template up - I typed it in manually and it failed? I ended up just typing in the actual year manually and I did not use any of the iptc commands - How specifically do you use these commands within the metadata section of PM? Thank you for any additional help you can give to solve these problems. -B
1) There's a section in the ingest dialog on the lower left that creates folders if you want them. Set Source Directory Structure to "ignore - copy all photos into the same destination" and then set Copy Photos to "directly into primary and secondary folders." 2) Hit the button that says "variables" and that will give you a LOT of options you can select, including {iptcyear4}. You should be able to type it manually, but just click the button to be safe.
Iam so glad I don’t shoot in burst mode. You have convinced me never ever too take that many photos. Like yourself I name my files by yearmonthdate. I add hour minutes seconds to end up with a unique file name. I use Imatch later on to add keywords. I only take about 100 street photography photos per day. I only get rid of any unfocused shoots and only shoot jpeg as the photos are just for me.
thank you for the beautiful presentation. but what do you do with the unselected photos. you throw it away. or do you keep everything. Greetings André from the Netherlands
Great video, thanks for sharing your process. Just a few questions, comments: The way you cull your originals you end up having several copies of the raw file in your folders. For each selection round the selected images are copied/duplicated into a new “selected” folder. If you do 3 or 4 rounds you may end up with up to 3 or 4 copies of the same raw files. Why not use star ratings or labels to tag your selections while going through each round? This way you could have all originals in one folder, properly tagged based on their rating, and filter this folder accordingly when exporting or moving to Capture One, Lightroom (or other). In addition to having multiple copies of the same master raw file my concern is that the tedious effort of culling your images is loosely tied only to the location of the file, which one may mess up by mistake, as opposed to have that crucial assessment info written directly into the file (just like you do with the metadata).
Exactly! “Everything is neatly in one folder - that can be backed up” (30:31) … but that one folder contains multiple copies of the same RAW files! The duplication increases with the (very necessary) back-up. Coupled with the very long naming convention David is essentially advocating using the computer’s OS as his file [digital asset] management (DAM) system. As you rightly point out if at some later stage you make a mess of the folder structure much of the effort is lost and (worse) there are now multiple duplicate copies. A program such as Lightroom has DAM built into it and there is no need to duplicate RAW files in this workflow to track at what stage in the process the image was eliminated from consideration. Obviously whatever system you use you must maintain back-up copies on different media in physically separate places.
I use lightroom and have a very similar process, at the first pass I simply add a 1* rating to anything I think might be useful, second pass of the 1*'s to edit anything I think is good and give them a 2* which I will give a very basic edit to and export as a jpg, then if anything stands out as excellent then I do more detailed editing and increase the * rating. If I am covering a multi day event I can do the 2* edits quickly and give a client a wide selection in a few hours after the event finishes for the day. Post event I will double check I haven't missed anything in the 1* images and probably a few weeks later I will look at the unrated images to check them and usually delete those to free up space. An unrated image usually has to be pretty bad ;-)
@@seandee The question David was answering was about sorting a “few hundred images” the video discusses “a few thousand” - so 10x as many. This doesn’t alter any of the principles covered but it does make an order of magnitude difference to the times. I agree with @hubertd1316 culling a few hundred images in Lightroom Classic can be really fast.
I use both Photo Mechanic and Fast Raw Viewer. When doing portrait work, I may use FRV for the selects, other times just PM as I’m already there (always PM for import, rename, sort in folders, and tag with templates first), seeing as Fast Raw Viewer is extremely fast and I can check critical focus on the eyes as well as expression etc quickly with a keystroke (PM can’t do that as it only uses preview jpegs, FRV the actual Raws) as I have my hand in the number keys to tag 1 to 5 star in 1 pass, working instinctively. Anything OK and usable is a 3 for review if I don,t come across a 4 (a select for edit), and a 5 is exceptional Wow shot. I set the R key to be the Adobe Reject tag (it’s just below the number keys), alternatively a 1 star. After the initial pass, I delete the Rejects (missed focus, bad expression, bad framing etc). If anything is a 2, meaning Delete unless there is no decent photo, I quickly go through them to see if any needs to be upgraded to 3, keep for later, and the remaining 2s are not worth keeping and gets deleted. Next if there’s a gap in the story for the 4s and 5s, I will select something from the 3s. Now I apply colour tags on the 4s and 5s (some 3s if necessary), green for Alt Selects for processing, purple Selects. They are the ones to be imported to Capture One. Mind you, I don’t do sport or wildlife, so only ever do quick bursts if necessary, never spray-and-pray. I shoot with intent, trying to anticipate the moment, as shooting thousands of images is a nightmare and a waste. I don’t like hitting the buffer anyway, the camera slows way down, and means I’m more likely to miss a shot, as it’s busy writing (plain old SD cards here).
I’ve heard several people talk about this program but have never used it. I’ve got two trips later this year that I’m hoping to get several thousand shots and this may be worth looking into. It’s one bad thing about the R5 and being able to shoot 20fps, those files add up quick. I’m still shooting RAW but think I may try CRAW to see if I can tell the difference.
I use a system of folders broke down by year and month. I pre-sort everything by YYYY\MM\ and then my Files are JobName-YYYY-MM-DD Time. Before Delivery all deliverable (tiff / jpg) files get moved to a a folder up a level to the YYYY folder and I use a JobName. I also move any my competed edits that aren't part of a job to the YYYY folder. It has the benefit of being able to see at a glance the jobs I did that year, and my top photos of the year.
Hi David: I am new to PM6+ so your explanation was spot on and very helpful. I also do a lot of keywording and I was wondering how you handle this process, if at all. Cheers, Keith
Thank you for your excellent video. 1) Do you end up with duplicate images in RAW, First_Edit, Second_Edit, … ? If so won’t you get duplicates when you back up? 2) Can you quickly zoom in on the JPEG when culling? I shoot a lot of birds and wildlife in action and making sure the selections are sharp is a key decision factor. 3) Are there any Photo Mechanic AI tools to rate sharpness? 4) I assume you only have the final selections in your Capture One catalog. I typically use Lightroom. Is there an easy / fast. way to import all the photos and flag the final pics in Lightroom?
I do something similar - I Tag the ones to Delete on my 1st pass. I then do a bulk rename (Ctrl+M) using the yyyy-mm-dd {Event} by {photographer} {sequence} template. Next I go through and add Star Ratings (keyboard Ctr+number). I use stars up to 4 and reserve 5 stars for published/edited images. I can then view only the star ratings that I want by using a filter in PhotoMechanic Pro. Edited exports get stored in a subfolder called Exports.
The only ones I delete are from my remote camera since 90% of those are not relevant. I’ll do that first, and then add the remaining files into my raw folder. You just never know when old images might become more important. I’ve made occasional license sales from images I didn’t pull into my first edit.
I do something similar, however, instead of duplicating the tagged photos, I tell PM to show only the tagged ones, then on my next pass I press “T” for the ones I don’t want, thus removing their tagged status. That way it’s only one set of files throughout the process until I duplicate the final set.
Nice 😊 I have pretty much the same workflow, except the naming convention. I do the whole editing process from a fast NVMe SSD with Thunderbolt 3 and when my images are done I move and back up to a pretty-fast HDD with Thunderbolt 3. And I use ACR and Photoshop, only 😂
You mentioned having a script that placed the location data in your headline field and had once also placed a line across the bottom of the image. What language or utility do you write that script in? Is it a formal programminb language?
super tuto ! I am interested with PM also as viewer on my win10 laptop instead of explorer (+codec), bridge, fastpictureviewe, xnview,... I have purchased capture one but don't use it. It couldn't digest my 100K photos while LRC does that without problem and i have not understood how to work with your final folder and C1 sessions,...
This is a very helpful video. My only question is whether it is necessary to duplicate the tagged photos. It adds extra storage. Wouldn’t a color coding or star system save space?
Thank you David. Great video. All makes sense. Purchased PM. One question... After you've culled the photos and made your final pass is there any compelling reason to keep anything but 2 folders - the original RAWs and the RAWs Finals folders - and remove the intermediate passes? Just wondering if you see a reason to save them.
Very helpful video Dave. I've been hesitant to fully dive into Photo Mechanic but this made it seem easy. What's the upside of using Capture One vs. LR?
Hello David. Thanks for a great video. I use PM for my sports pictures and there I put the name of the player in the picture. My questions are. Do you enter the name of all band members who end up in the picture? I noticed you put the artist's name in the IPTC but not the name of the bass player. Thanks in advance.
That was a fantastic and helpful video! I don't use Photo Mechanic as often as I should and now I have more confidence to use it. I like the file structure as well, except the copying of the RAW files to the selects folder instead of moving it. I don't like to store duplicate files. Also, I noticed in your IPTC data that your name is misspelled in the Creator line of your template. If that's the actual one you use, you may want to fix it :). Thank you for taking the time to make such a helpful tutorial.
When you are tagging and then making copies, are those actual copies or virtual copies? If actual, don’t you wind up with several copies of the same image and extra space on drives and potential confusion as to which is “the file” down the road? Or do you delete all files except the “finals folder”?
Can't speak for David, but my guess is I bet since this is not an LR workflow he's actually making duplicate copies of his selects. So within that example, the master file will grow from the initial 301 files to whatever amount his sub-folders have selects. 50-100 extra files most likely are not a storage issue for David. If a client wants the SOOC RAW he's got it, no questions. No mistakes.
As Terrell says, I’m making actual copies. Disk space isn’t as expensive as it used to be and I find it to be “cleaner” to have complete folder of each pass.
Ouch! Never heard of this set up. My flow is just similar, but with Lightroom - I just flag the decent ones & tickle the sliders. I can see the time saving constraints for large banks of images too, I just don't get that many images! I will dump the obvious rubbish either as I'm shooting or in a simple viewer before importing into LR.
Ok, so how does the moving work? Is there several copies of images across 2/3/4th pass folders, or moved images? Surely that would drink up hard drive space?
@@DavidBergmanPhoto Cool :-) I'll have to re-watch this a few times I think. It's great to see new ideas of working, and how things work too. With all of my learning experiences, I've never even heard of this software! Every day is a school day :-)
Question: Is there a way to change the tag shortcut key from T to the space bar? (T --> SpaceBar). Thank you for the video! Been a lightroom user forever, but the speed at which you can browse RAWs here is a huge attraction for me.
Thanks David. This vid is very well done. I appreciate the magnifying glass approach. I am an amateur photographer with photos all over the place. I want to organize them but am stuck. I bought an Infinty?? thurmb drive that was too complicated for me. Then I bought a 1TB external HD. Since I partially COPIED, rather than MOVED photos into the new external drive, I can't tell where I left off. My photos are on Google Photos, iCloud, OneDrive, and my own PC hard drive. This system, though fascinating, may be a bit too much for me. Don't know. Any suggestions? I shoot from my iPhone daily. BTW. I do have Lightroom, but haven't touched it yet.
Thank you David for some clarification. What I'm hoping to understand (and if that's possible) is to drag thumbnails around in a specific order to then rename then import the new order into soundslide as a slideshow. Is that possible?
Yes. Instead of sorting by filename, change the sort to "arrangement" in Photo Mechanic. Then you can drag them around however you want and rename them after that.
I have a similar system. I creat a folder with the name of the Band and the location using CaptureOne, this way i will have the seletecs folder and teh output folder. I manualy create a RAWs folder, and i copy my Prograde cards using the Prograde card readers to the raw folder, i dont use the PhotoMechanic for this, but i think i will start using it at this stage. After all raws are on the Raw folder i open it on Photomechanic and star culling, i usualy do one pass, as i select a few images i move them to the CaptureOne selects folder, and go to CaptureOne and at this point i will do the secound pass, in CaptureOne, and i edit the best of this select. I go back to Photomechanic and continue selecting... Now that im righting my processe it feel a bit caotic...i think i will strat doing the first and secound pass on PhotoMechanic and only send the best to CaptureOne...
Thanks for sharing this information. It was so helpful in understanding how to use Photo Mechanic. My question though ... when you copy the tagged photos from your RAW folder to the your SELECTS folder, aren't you duplicating the files on your computer? Is there another to move the files without duplicating it?
Photo Mechanic is nice. Just be prepared for it regularly crashing on you. I typical cull from 7 to 10 thousand image each night. 2 to 3 crashes are normal for that quantity.
David Bergman I've used it for the better part of a decade, on both Windows and Apple machines. Always crashes when going thru the jpeg files, tagging the keepers. When the screen goes red you know it's about to ask you if you want to send a debug report.
Huh.. odd.. I’ve never had PM crash on me? Have you tried breaking up into 2-3 folders? Are you working off of your local machine or an external drive? Most I’ve run at once was 13,000-ish off of a Samsung SSD and it was smooth as can be. When I’ve run JPG it seems just as fast if not faster as there’s no XMP file being written?
I never rename original file numbers. I add name, add a sequence prefix, but always leave original file name after for future reference. It often prove importance. I tent to backup raw files as they are from card. Original number ion my changed name proved useful. Also, if I would rename all files to 0001->, than I would have 500 images starting at "0001" every year. When I leave original names, there maybe 2 or 3 images bearing same number, which is much easier to find them in the future.
This video spends a long time describing the import and key-wording process which is broadly the same as in Lightroom. It’s more than 20 minutes before the difference is made clear; PM saves the render time that Lightroom or Capture One would take because Photo Mechanic uses the JPEGs that the camera embeds in the RAW files (24:10). The “culling” process described is a duplication process - at each stage the long-list and later the short-list is duplicated in yet another folder. Eventually just the contents of the shortlist in the folder “RAW finals” are imported into Capture One. The definition of the verb “to cull” is “to select and remove from a group, especially to discard or destroy as inferior”. This process cannot correctly be called culling because no dud photograph is ever deleted. Sam’s question was about sorting a “few hundred images” in the video David discusses “a few thousand” - so 10x as many. This doesn’t alter any of the principles covered but it does make an order of magnitude difference to the times saved (10 times fewer photographs 10 times less time saved). The sheer numbers put this in the realms of the professional not the hobbyist. What’s the monetary cost of this saving - I checked …. In the UK, today after the 30-day trial (which would end on 2 Apr 2024), it would cost £145.36/year plus 20% VAT. That’s £145 for a professional photographer (who can claim back the VAT) and £175 for the amateur photographer (who must pay the VAT). By contrast, the Adobe Photography (20 GB) Plan, which includes both Lightroom and Photoshop, costs £9.98/month [a figure that includes VAT] that’s £119.76 per year. PM is 46% more expensive and you still must buy the Adobe Plan (or some other editing software). Will I buy PM?… No, it's too expensive and brings too little benefit.
Thank you for making this. There is a function in a program called Exifpro which allows you to copy any tagged photos to a folder with the name of the tag. And this is only if there's one tag to a photo. It cannot do multiple. Do you know if there is a function on photo mechanic to be able to do this?
Thank you for sharing your process. I found this video via a search for Photo Mechanic, because I’d heard about this software via another video (that mentioned it, but didn’t go into details). Only negative comment I have with the process shown here is that you are making a first cut & copying the files into another sub folder, then doing a second cut and copying files into another sub-sub folder…and repeating this for the number of passes you require. In doing this, you are duplicating images in the sub folders potentially multiple times and this is all requiring more storage in your NAS. Over years, this duplication of files will be wasting significant amounts of your storage (unless you are using a Qnap NAS with Hero OS and apply a setting for it to remove duplicate photos while still keeping a reference where the photo needs to appear). It seems wasteful, when you could keep all images in the one folder & apply a ‘scoring’ system & filter to show images of a certain score. For example, first cut, score the files you want to take through to a second viewing, 1. Then filter to show all files with 1, now do a second pass and score all you want to take forward 2…..& so on. This way, you are not duplicating files in your storage system, but it’s still achieving the same goal. I’m only an amateur hobby shooter, but I’ve had a NAS since around 2007, and have had to upgrade storage multiple times over the years to add capacity. It’s not just your NAS storage that is impacted by this duplication of images into sub folders process, it is also your back up to your NAS storage. Apart from that, I like the approach. I also use a “yyyymmdd - description” approach to my folder naming, but, I have been relying on C1 to do my culling. However, I like Photo mechanics speed, & the great flexibility to rename files & add/edit metadata….although, I think you can do at least some of this in C1. I know in the past I’ve used another cheap piece of software when I’ve needed to do bulk filename &/or metadata changes/edits.
help. i have 1000s of pics on my pc in photo folders. how do i AUTOmatically add those unique folder names to the photo EXIF after the fact (because i'm upload to google photos and want to create albums based on those folder names)...thank you. (no sidecars....just adding info to the exif)
All I can say is "Thank you". You just helped me save a lot of valuable time
This tutorial is so good. Thanks for posting. I just downloaded PM and it's solved a lot of file management headache. LR file management was driving me insane and I was never 100% solid on it as a file mgmt. program. I've used PM for 3 days now and it's easy, clean and super fast, and that's only after 3 days! I'm sold on it.
I have a very similar process, for the most part! I use Lightroom Classic though. And I use the star rating combined with x to decide if i keep them. X is reject, 3 stars or higher is keep (based on instinctive decision). 1 and 2 stars for the not so good but keep just to be sure, if it's not the best but unsure if "grandma Betty" is in a better shot or not. In principle, only 3 stars or higher get tuned. First round of x345 is to quickly eliminate all bugger out of focus derpface images, round 2 is to decide between similar versions (mostly when shot in burst mode). If too many remain, to which conclusion i usually come during editing phase, i go back in for another crutical cull round.
I also use the color codes and view filters to help me speedup the culling process. I think I'll have to make a video about this, lol
This is exactly what I needed after buying Photo Mechanic. Thank you very much for this.
Great job! Finally I learned how to begin organizing what I already have and how to avoid the mess going forward. Thanks!
Thanks for sharing your work flow. Finally i found someones explanation on how this actually works to cull through images quicker. I have seen other videos of how to set up it but showing your thought process finally quantified why it is truly beneficial.
I really find it frustrating when creators explain concepts and then don't show it in action at all. Sure I appreciate free info and free tutorials no matter what but it's way more useful if they actually show me the process!
Thank god I accidently stumbled onto your video clip. I have struggled with this for years and you are the first person with a process and recommendation of a product to satisfy all my photo management problems. I loved your clip and will get the program and follow your process! Thanks for helping.
*_Digital is an "endless roll of film", but there's a trade-off..._*
Yeah there is, the bulk film back gets really large when it’s an endless roll of film 😂
Outstanding video! I’m new to PM and the capabilities are so numerous that the learning curve is rather steep at first. This video cleared up many questions for me and taught many capabilities I didn’t even know existed. The short cuts are huge time savers if I can just remember them. Thanks again! I AM subscribed! PM is clearly a must have with the new rapid fire cameras. I have PM 6+ and absolutely LOVE the new Organizer. It solved my age old problem of tracking and organizing thousands of images. Best I’ve ever found!
anyone else notice David has a glow about him since he's back shooting concerts? Haha, thanks for the great info!
Is it that obvious?
Completely brilliant. I bought a license for photo mechanic very recently and this is just what I need. Thank you!
Fantastic lesson for all photographers. It a quick process to get to the key images. A key way to be able to recall the images without pulling ones hair out of one head because of bad memory or messy order of images. Great demo David
Been waiting for this one. He is the master of photo organization!!!
Thank you so much for doing this. I have 30K+ photos in various folders with every one imported to LR and/or C1. Most of them rubbish. It's a mess. Definitely downloading Photo Mechanic and implementing a similar workflow. Brilliant.
You need to learn about folders, Smart Folders and tagging my friend. PhotoMechanic just replicates what LR does on import… nothing special.
Great, thanks David. I’m pleased to see that around 90% of my workflow is similar to yours which gives me confidence that my setup is ok.
You crushed it! Great presentation. Thorough, efficient, and detailed leaving no big questions unanswered. Thanks for sharing the knowledge.
Fantastic video David! My 'system' is a non'-system. I really appreciate learning about your methodology using PM. You have clarified a lot of my questions re PM. Thanks again!
As a newcomer to Photo Mechanic, I found this really helpful. Thanks
amazing, clear, and super efficient! I realized we have much of the same workflow but I learned many new things from you. THANK YOU!!
Really, really helpful workflow rundown, thanks !!
Great video!
I been using PM for over 20 years in my work flow. I love it!
Thanks for this breakdown! Very informative and helpful for me! Much appreciated David!
I have been looking for a workflow that would work for me and I think I just found it. Thanks a lot for this video it was very helpful.
Excellent.
Thanks David and Adorama. I always learn from your videos.
You asked what our system is. I'm still working on mine. One thing i have decided is that even the first cull needs to be close to full size, and really it always seems to be full-sized. Seeing yours confirmed for me that you need full size to absorb what you've got in a flash: focus, compo, croppable, etc. ... plus those odd ones you keep anyway because your sub concious tells you there is something redeemable there. Right now I'll just move all jpegs to a folder and flash through them. Flash quick one time to esti ate the keeper ratio. Then flash again.
So here's the stupid part: To get that 80 out of a 1000 I just jot the 4 digits down. One place on the notepad for keeps. One for images to send to a friend, etc. My new process seems to be hand tagging an auto generated list of numbers by hitting to insert a line at the keeps. Then i run a code algorythm to find and copy those to a final folder.
Great explanation of your work flow. My scale is much smaller, 300-500 a shoot. My first passes start out like yours but quickly turn into examining each photo etc. Now I will incorporate your plan of quickly elimination shots on the first pass that I do not want, then later pass compare more carefully. thanks so much
Great vídeo David, thanks from Portugal
Great round-up of PM -- crucial as our cameras get faster and faster at making gazillions of giant images!
Extraordinary video as usual. I get so much out of your ask... videos. I've been looking for software like photo mechanic. Thanks for educating me about its capabilities and your system to name, and cull images. Your the best.
Thanks David for sharing. This was extremely helpful to me.
what if?
the first pass - pictures marked by 1 star.
the 2nd pass (and usually it is the final one) - 2 stars.
some special pictures which for example need retouching or sth else - 3 stars.
and if you select like this, there is no need to create additional copies and waste disk space.
Whatever works for you! I do my star ratings at the end inside Capture One. That way I can find my "best" images easily.
You are so good at what you do. Thanks so much for this video
Been using Lightroom for 10 years for all this covering Dog agility / Sports events. Can get upwards of 2k images and this is by far the most painful part of the process. Current workflow is Import from card to a local folder / Import to lightroom / 1st pass is pick reject having to zoom EVERY flicking image to check for focus / 2nd Pass is crop & straighten / 3rd pass is presets & tweaks, 4th pass is evening out exposures were needed / Create destination folders for each event class, sort then publish to my site. By far and away the worst part is 1st phase. The rendering you mentioned is painful beyond belief. Can take me upwards of 3-4 evenings to complete a weekend shoot sometimes longer.
A fellow photographer just mentioned PM as we were complaining to each other about the worst part of the job.
Now here I am frantically trying to learn it but mightily impressed and unbelievably angry at myself for putting up with the Status Quo for way too long. Thank you so much for a brilliant introduction.
Wondering how quick a cropping and straightening session would be!!!
very informative Dave. I found myself tweeking my worflow a bit after watching.
David! I always look forward to your videos because I know I'm gonna learn a lot of useful tips. Thank you for having a great teaching style that works so well. Thank you Adorama for sponsoring these videos.
I was contemplating this program. Thanks so much for this.
Nice! If I were to start using Photo Mechanic and this workflow, I would however (to Lightroom) import the "RAW Final Edits" folder, because in the library, I would see it as:
> YYYYMMDD Name of Main Folder
>> Selects
>>> RAW Final Edits
This way, you always have a reminder of the origins of the photos, and if someone else needs to work on it, they also know that "Ok, I'm in the RAW Final Edits folder within YYYYMMDD Name of Main Folder > Selects, so maybe if I go into YYYYMMDD Name of Main Folder or Selects, I can browse for other images from that shoot". It just makes more sense to me in order to keep things clear and not having to launch an investigation, whenever I would want to see other photos from the project one day (which, very, very often is the reality).
Great information on Photo Mechanic, thanks David!
Thank you for the video was very helpful in my wedding business.
Thank you so much for the time you took to do this Awesome Tutorial. Love your system and the speed of your presentation! Keep it up please!
Excellent explanation and good work flow. Mine is similar - I also Photo Mechanic and Capture One. Keep up with the great videos.
Hi David - thank you for this instructional video - I bought Photo Mechanic as a result of this video and I have a couple questions:
1) On Ingest I used your method - folder to desktop with date (in the order you suggest) and then RAW file within - when I set Photo Mechanic to Ingest to the RAW folder it makes another folder and named it the date of the next day from what my main folder was (e.g. my main folder was 20210710 and the sub-folder that it created by itself with in the RAW folder that was in the 20210710 was names 20210711). Then when I Ingested my 2nd card and also designated it to the RAW folder PM made another 20210711 folder within the other 20210711 folder that it originally made. As a result I have to manually select all the photos from both 20210711 folders and manually drag them back up into the RAW folder and then delete the two 20210711 folders. This ended up working but was a major drag and significantly slowed my work flow. Is there a selection button that I am missing in the Ingest section that tells PM to either make a sub-folder or in my case to NEVER do this? Please advise.
2) In the metadata section - how do you apply the iptc year etc. Do you just literally type {iptcyear4} or is there a button that sets this template up - I typed it in manually and it failed? I ended up just typing in the actual year manually and I did not use any of the iptc commands - How specifically do you use these commands within the metadata section of PM?
Thank you for any additional help you can give to solve these problems.
-B
1) There's a section in the ingest dialog on the lower left that creates folders if you want them. Set Source Directory Structure to "ignore - copy all photos into the same destination" and then set Copy Photos to "directly into primary and secondary folders."
2) Hit the button that says "variables" and that will give you a LOT of options you can select, including {iptcyear4}. You should be able to type it manually, but just click the button to be safe.
@@DavidBergmanPhoto Thank you David!
Thanks again David! I've just installed PMech, and I've got a 900 image model shoot from yesterday I'm going to try it out on.
Thanks for putting this together. Really helpful.
Iam so glad I don’t shoot in burst mode. You have convinced me never ever too take that many photos. Like yourself I name my files by yearmonthdate. I add hour minutes seconds to end up with a unique file name. I use Imatch later on to add keywords. I only take about 100 street photography photos per day. I only get rid of any unfocused shoots and only shoot jpeg as the photos are just for me.
I know it's your workflow, but PM can do this manual stuff automatically. You just have to "program" it with the variables. It saves tons of time!
thank you for the beautiful presentation. but what do you do with the unselected photos. you throw it away. or do you keep everything. Greetings André from the Netherlands
Amazing tutorial, and so helpful. Thank you!!
Great video, thanks for sharing your process. Just a few questions, comments: The way you cull your originals you end up having several copies of the raw file in your folders. For each selection round the selected images are copied/duplicated into a new “selected” folder. If you do 3 or 4 rounds you may end up with up to 3 or 4 copies of the same raw files. Why not use star ratings or labels to tag your selections while going through each round? This way you could have all originals in one folder, properly tagged based on their rating, and filter this folder accordingly when exporting or moving to Capture One, Lightroom (or other). In addition to having multiple copies of the same master raw file my concern is that the tedious effort of culling your images is loosely tied only to the location of the file, which one may mess up by mistake, as opposed to have that crucial assessment info written directly into the file (just like you do with the metadata).
Exactly! “Everything is neatly in one folder - that can be backed up” (30:31) … but that one folder contains multiple copies of the same RAW files! The duplication increases with the (very necessary) back-up. Coupled with the very long naming convention David is essentially advocating using the computer’s OS as his file [digital asset] management (DAM) system. As you rightly point out if at some later stage you make a mess of the folder structure much of the effort is lost and (worse) there are now multiple duplicate copies.
A program such as Lightroom has DAM built into it and there is no need to duplicate RAW files in this workflow to track at what stage in the process the image was eliminated from consideration.
Obviously whatever system you use you must maintain back-up copies on different media in physically separate places.
Thank you for this, much needed!
I use lightroom and have a very similar process, at the first pass I simply add a 1* rating to anything I think might be useful, second pass of the 1*'s to edit anything I think is good and give them a 2* which I will give a very basic edit to and export as a jpg, then if anything stands out as excellent then I do more detailed editing and increase the * rating. If I am covering a multi day event I can do the 2* edits quickly and give a client a wide selection in a few hours after the event finishes for the day.
Post event I will double check I haven't missed anything in the 1* images and probably a few weeks later I will look at the unrated images to check them and usually delete those to free up space. An unrated image usually has to be pretty bad ;-)
It’s not the same when you’re dealing with 80-100 mb files. The process may be similar but the speed is nowhere close.
@@seandee I cull in library mode in LR and it's really fast.
@@seandee The question David was answering was about sorting a “few hundred images” the video discusses “a few thousand” - so 10x as many. This doesn’t alter any of the principles covered but it does make an order of magnitude difference to the times. I agree with @hubertd1316 culling a few hundred images in Lightroom Classic can be really fast.
I use both Photo Mechanic and Fast Raw Viewer. When doing portrait work, I may use FRV for the selects, other times just PM as I’m already there (always PM for import, rename, sort in folders, and tag with templates first), seeing as Fast Raw Viewer is extremely fast and I can check critical focus on the eyes as well as expression etc quickly with a keystroke (PM can’t do that as it only uses preview jpegs, FRV the actual Raws) as I have my hand in the number keys to tag 1 to 5 star in 1 pass, working instinctively. Anything OK and usable is a 3 for review if I don,t come across a 4 (a select for edit), and a 5 is exceptional Wow shot. I set the R key to be the Adobe Reject tag (it’s just below the number keys), alternatively a 1 star.
After the initial pass, I delete the Rejects (missed focus, bad expression, bad framing etc). If anything is a 2, meaning Delete unless there is no decent photo, I quickly go through them to see if any needs to be upgraded to 3, keep for later, and the remaining 2s are not worth keeping and gets deleted.
Next if there’s a gap in the story for the 4s and 5s, I will select something from the 3s. Now I apply colour tags on the 4s and 5s (some 3s if necessary), green for Alt Selects for processing, purple Selects. They are the ones to be imported to Capture One.
Mind you, I don’t do sport or wildlife, so only ever do quick bursts if necessary, never spray-and-pray. I shoot with intent, trying to anticipate the moment, as shooting thousands of images is a nightmare and a waste. I don’t like hitting the buffer anyway, the camera slows way down, and means I’m more likely to miss a shot, as it’s busy writing (plain old SD cards here).
Awesome tip, thank you! I have been looking for a Fast Raw Viewer it is reasonably priced to boot!
I’ve heard several people talk about this program but have never used it. I’ve got two trips later this year that I’m hoping to get several thousand shots and this may be worth looking into.
It’s one bad thing about the R5 and being able to shoot 20fps, those files add up quick. I’m still shooting RAW but think I may try CRAW to see if I can tell the difference.
I use a system of folders broke down by year and month. I pre-sort everything by YYYY\MM\ and then my Files are JobName-YYYY-MM-DD Time. Before Delivery all deliverable (tiff / jpg) files get moved to a a folder up a level to the YYYY folder and I use a JobName. I also move any my competed edits that aren't part of a job to the YYYY folder. It has the benefit of being able to see at a glance the jobs I did that year, and my top photos of the year.
Hi David: I am new to PM6+ so your explanation was spot on and very helpful. I also do a lot of keywording and I was wondering how you handle this process, if at all. Cheers, Keith
The tutorial is helpful!! Thanks for sharing!
informative thanks , i use photo mechanic and often think i should learn it better , seeing someone else's workflow helps the brain re gear. :)
Brilliant as always
Thank you for your excellent video. 1) Do you end up with duplicate images in RAW, First_Edit, Second_Edit, … ? If so won’t you get duplicates when you back up? 2) Can you quickly zoom in on the JPEG when culling? I shoot a lot of birds and wildlife in action and making sure the selections are sharp is a key decision factor. 3) Are there any Photo Mechanic AI tools to rate sharpness? 4) I assume you only have the final selections in your Capture One catalog. I typically use Lightroom. Is there an easy / fast. way to import all the photos and flag the final pics in Lightroom?
I do something similar - I Tag the ones to Delete on my 1st pass. I then do a bulk rename (Ctrl+M) using the yyyy-mm-dd {Event} by {photographer} {sequence} template. Next I go through and add Star Ratings (keyboard Ctr+number). I use stars up to 4 and reserve 5 stars for published/edited images. I can then view only the star ratings that I want by using a filter in PhotoMechanic Pro. Edited exports get stored in a subfolder called Exports.
That was an excellent video! I am going to reorganise how I go through my images of birds. Thank you. So you never delete any images?
The only ones I delete are from my remote camera since 90% of those are not relevant. I’ll do that first, and then add the remaining files into my raw folder.
You just never know when old images might become more important. I’ve made occasional license sales from images I didn’t pull into my first edit.
I do something similar, however, instead of duplicating the tagged photos, I tell PM to show only the tagged ones, then on my next pass I press “T” for the ones I don’t want, thus removing their tagged status. That way it’s only one set of files throughout the process until I duplicate the final set.
excellent thanks, a great intro on how to use this software
This is just Great... one small doubt.. does photomechanic software reduce or affect the quality \size of the images? TIA
21:00 is where the tagging is talked about :)
Nice 😊 I have pretty much the same workflow, except the naming convention. I do the whole editing process from a fast NVMe SSD with Thunderbolt 3 and when my images are done I move and back up to a pretty-fast HDD with Thunderbolt 3. And I use ACR and Photoshop, only 😂
You mentioned having a script that placed the location data in your headline field and had once also placed a line across the bottom of the image. What language or utility do you write that script in? Is it a formal programminb language?
super tuto ! I am interested with PM also as viewer on my win10 laptop instead of explorer (+codec), bridge, fastpictureviewe, xnview,...
I have purchased capture one but don't use it. It couldn't digest my 100K photos while LRC does that without problem and i have not understood how to work with your final folder and C1 sessions,...
This is a very helpful video. My only question is whether it is necessary to duplicate the tagged photos. It adds extra storage. Wouldn’t a color coding or star system save space?
To each their own, but I like having “clean” folders of each pass. Storage space isn’t that expensive relatively speaking.
Thank you David. Great video. All makes sense. Purchased PM. One question... After you've culled the photos and made your final pass is there any compelling reason to keep anything but 2 folders - the original RAWs and the RAWs Finals folders - and remove the intermediate passes? Just wondering if you see a reason to save them.
Very helpful video Dave. I've been hesitant to fully dive into Photo Mechanic but this made it seem easy. What's the upside of using Capture One vs. LR?
That’s another video. :) But it’s really just up to the quality of the conversions and the user interface. Everyone has different preferences.
Hello David.
Thanks for a great video.
I use PM for my sports pictures and there I put the name of the player in the picture.
My questions are.
Do you enter the name of all band members who end up in the picture?
I noticed you put the artist's name in the IPTC but not the name of the bass player. Thanks in advance.
That was a fantastic and helpful video! I don't use Photo Mechanic as often as I should and now I have more confidence to use it. I like the file structure as well, except the copying of the RAW files to the selects folder instead of moving it. I don't like to store duplicate files. Also, I noticed in your IPTC data that your name is misspelled in the Creator line of your template. If that's the actual one you use, you may want to fix it :). Thank you for taking the time to make such a helpful tutorial.
Good catch, thanks!
Thanks so much for this video David!
How long is your processing time on a regular night with those 3000-5000 images?
When you are tagging and then making copies, are those actual copies or virtual copies? If actual, don’t you wind up with several copies of the same image and extra space on drives and potential confusion as to which is “the file” down the road? Or do you delete all files except the “finals folder”?
Can't speak for David, but my guess is I bet since this is not an LR workflow he's actually making duplicate copies of his selects. So within that example, the master file will grow from the initial 301 files to whatever amount his sub-folders have selects. 50-100 extra files most likely are not a storage issue for David. If a client wants the SOOC RAW he's got it, no questions. No mistakes.
As Terrell says, I’m making actual copies. Disk space isn’t as expensive as it used to be and I find it to be “cleaner” to have complete folder of each pass.
beautifully explained!
Ouch! Never heard of this set up. My flow is just similar, but with Lightroom - I just flag the decent ones & tickle the sliders. I can see the time saving constraints for large banks of images too, I just don't get that many images! I will dump the obvious rubbish either as I'm shooting or in a simple viewer before importing into LR.
Ok, so how does the moving work? Is there several copies of images across 2/3/4th pass folders, or moved images? Surely that would drink up hard drive space?
@@samanthaodonnell4329 yes but disk space isn’t that expensive and I like having “clean” folders of each pass.
@@DavidBergmanPhoto Cool :-) I'll have to re-watch this a few times I think. It's great to see new ideas of working, and how things work too. With all of my learning experiences, I've never even heard of this software! Every day is a school day :-)
Thanks - this is very helpful!
Superb !! That works for me !!!
Great Explainer! THANK YOU!
Question: Is there a way to change the tag shortcut key from T to the space bar? (T --> SpaceBar). Thank you for the video! Been a lightroom user forever, but the speed at which you can browse RAWs here is a huge attraction for me.
I have several PM shortcuts I have customized with Keyboard Maestro. This would be easy using that tool.
thanks for making things easier
Thanks David. This vid is very well done. I appreciate the magnifying glass approach. I am an amateur photographer with photos all over the place. I want to organize them but am stuck. I bought an Infinty?? thurmb drive that was too complicated for me. Then I bought a 1TB external HD. Since I partially COPIED, rather than MOVED photos into the new external drive, I can't tell where I left off. My photos are on Google Photos, iCloud, OneDrive, and my own PC hard drive. This system, though fascinating, may be a bit too much for me. Don't know. Any suggestions? I shoot from my iPhone daily. BTW. I do have Lightroom, but haven't touched it yet.
Do you go back and delete your first, second, third edit folders? 500 RAW images is a lot of disk space to have duplicates of just sitting there.
Hello, how do you make the script to pull data from a photo? Thanks for your help and videos.
Thank you David for some clarification. What I'm hoping to understand (and if that's possible) is to drag thumbnails around in a specific order to then rename then import the new order into soundslide as a slideshow. Is that possible?
Yes. Instead of sorting by filename, change the sort to "arrangement" in Photo Mechanic. Then you can drag them around however you want and rename them after that.
I have a similar system.
I creat a folder with the name of the Band and the location using CaptureOne, this way i will have the seletecs folder and teh output folder.
I manualy create a RAWs folder, and i copy my Prograde cards using the Prograde card readers to the raw folder, i dont use the PhotoMechanic for this, but i think i will start using it at this stage.
After all raws are on the Raw folder i open it on Photomechanic and star culling, i usualy do one pass, as i select a few images i move them to the CaptureOne selects folder, and go to CaptureOne and at this point i will do the secound pass, in CaptureOne, and i edit the best of this select.
I go back to Photomechanic and continue selecting...
Now that im righting my processe it feel a bit caotic...i think i will strat doing the first and secound pass on PhotoMechanic and only send the best to CaptureOne...
Thanks for sharing this information. It was so helpful in understanding how to use Photo Mechanic. My question though ... when you copy the tagged photos from your RAW folder to the your SELECTS folder, aren't you duplicating the files on your computer? Is there another to move the files without duplicating it?
Photo Mechanic is nice. Just be prepared for it regularly crashing on you. I typical cull from 7 to 10 thousand image each night. 2 to 3 crashes are normal for that quantity.
Weird. Mine never crashes.
David Bergman I've used it for the better part of a decade, on both Windows and Apple machines. Always crashes when going thru the jpeg files, tagging the keepers. When the screen goes red you know it's about to ask you if you want to send a debug report.
Huh.. odd.. I’ve never had PM crash on me? Have you tried breaking up into 2-3 folders? Are you working off of your local machine or an external drive? Most I’ve run at once was 13,000-ish off of a Samsung SSD and it was smooth as can be. When I’ve run JPG it seems just as fast if not faster as there’s no XMP file being written?
@@GOAP68 Have you checked with Camera Bits? I can’t remember mine crashing even once.
I never rename original file numbers. I add name, add a sequence prefix, but always leave original file name after for future reference. It often prove importance. I tent to backup raw files as they are from card. Original number ion my changed name proved useful. Also, if I would rename all files to 0001->, than I would have 500 images starting at "0001" every year. When I leave original names, there maybe 2 or 3 images bearing same number, which is much easier to find them in the future.
Pretty much what I do in Adobe Bridge which, in my opinion is under utilised and under rated.
@David Have you used Adobe Bridge?
Do you ever purge the photos in the First Pass (or second Pass, or third Pass) to save disk space?
Nope. You just never know. I’ve made license sales going back into images I didn’t think were worth keeping at the time.
This video spends a long time describing the import and key-wording process which is broadly the same as in Lightroom. It’s more than 20 minutes before the difference is made clear; PM saves the render time that Lightroom or Capture One would take because Photo Mechanic uses the JPEGs that the camera embeds in the RAW files (24:10).
The “culling” process described is a duplication process - at each stage the long-list and later the short-list is duplicated in yet another folder. Eventually just the contents of the shortlist in the folder “RAW finals” are imported into Capture One.
The definition of the verb “to cull” is “to select and remove from a group, especially to discard or destroy as inferior”. This process cannot correctly be called culling because no dud photograph is ever deleted.
Sam’s question was about sorting a “few hundred images” in the video David discusses “a few thousand” - so 10x as many. This doesn’t alter any of the principles covered but it does make an order of magnitude difference to the times saved (10 times fewer photographs 10 times less time saved). The sheer numbers put this in the realms of the professional not the hobbyist.
What’s the monetary cost of this saving - I checked ….
In the UK, today after the 30-day trial (which would end on 2 Apr 2024), it would cost £145.36/year plus 20% VAT. That’s £145 for a professional photographer (who can claim back the VAT) and £175 for the amateur photographer (who must pay the VAT).
By contrast, the Adobe Photography (20 GB) Plan, which includes both Lightroom and Photoshop, costs £9.98/month [a figure that includes VAT] that’s £119.76 per year. PM is 46% more expensive and you still must buy the Adobe Plan (or some other editing software).
Will I buy PM?… No, it's too expensive and brings too little benefit.
What do you do with all the duplicate images. Do you keep or delete them?
Yes! We all are Getting back to celebrating life! 🎸🎶🤣
Thank you for making this. There is a function in a program called Exifpro which allows you to copy any tagged photos to a folder with the name of the tag. And this is only if there's one tag to a photo. It cannot do multiple. Do you know if there is a function on photo mechanic to be able to do this?
Thank you for sharing your process.
I found this video via a search for Photo Mechanic, because I’d heard about this software via another video (that mentioned it, but didn’t go into details).
Only negative comment I have with the process shown here is that you are making a first cut & copying the files into another sub folder, then doing a second cut and copying files into another sub-sub folder…and repeating this for the number of passes you require. In doing this, you are duplicating images in the sub folders potentially multiple times and this is all requiring more storage in your NAS. Over years, this duplication of files will be wasting significant amounts of your storage (unless you are using a Qnap NAS with Hero OS and apply a setting for it to remove duplicate photos while still keeping a reference where the photo needs to appear). It seems wasteful, when you could keep all images in the one folder & apply a ‘scoring’ system & filter to show images of a certain score. For example, first cut, score the files you want to take through to a second viewing, 1. Then filter to show all files with 1, now do a second pass and score all you want to take forward 2…..& so on. This way, you are not duplicating files in your storage system, but it’s still achieving the same goal.
I’m only an amateur hobby shooter, but I’ve had a NAS since around 2007, and have had to upgrade storage multiple times over the years to add capacity. It’s not just your NAS storage that is impacted by this duplication of images into sub folders process, it is also your back up to your NAS storage.
Apart from that, I like the approach.
I also use a “yyyymmdd - description” approach to my folder naming, but, I have been relying on C1 to do my culling. However, I like Photo mechanics speed, & the great flexibility to rename files & add/edit metadata….although, I think you can do at least some of this in C1. I know in the past I’ve used another cheap piece of software when I’ve needed to do bulk filename &/or metadata changes/edits.
help. i have 1000s of pics on my pc in photo folders. how do i AUTOmatically add those unique folder names to the photo EXIF after the fact (because i'm upload to google photos and want to create albums based on those folder names)...thank you. (no sidecars....just adding info to the exif)
Thank you SO much. I need a system. My hard drive is a mess. Photo Mechanic sounds like what I need.