Welcome to Photo Mechanic 6 Camp 101!
I hope you brought your pens and notepads because you’re gonna want to write this stuff down.
To break it down in to simple terms, Photo Mechanic saves lives.
It save your life. Your computers life. Your clients life.
It is an all around good guy and team player.
A brief history: Photo Mechanic is a genius tool that allows you to quickly apply SEO keywords, copyright functions, and other information to a series of images. It also allows you to quickly cull through all of your images from an event without slowing down your computers processor. I love Lightroom, but it makes my culling process miserable.
If you watch the video, and follow along, you should be a master in no time.
First off, we want to import images in to the program, so we select File>Ingest
The Ingest box will pop up with a ton of options as described in the video. We want to fill in as much information as possible for SEO purposes.
Here are some key take aways from the meta data template to fill in. Feel free to copy and paste these and tailor them to your specific needs:
Description: Captures at {location} on {iptcday0} {iptcmonthname3}, {iptcyear} by _________ Photography.
Rights Usage Terms: Use of this photo is governed by contract and intellectual property laws of ________(State). This image remains the exclusive copyright property of the creator. No rights are granted for the use or transfer of ownership of this image.
Title/Object Name: {headline}
Event: {headline}
Headline: Title of Image
Copyright: Copyright: _____________ Photography
Keywords example: Shelby Forman, Shelby Liz, Shelby Liz Photography, shelbylizphoto, family photos, www.shelbylizco.com, {iptcyear4}, {photog}, reno tahoe photographer, lake tahoe photographer, reno photographer, lake tahoe wedding photographer, graeagle wedding photography
Next, we want to check out our images and see which ones we want to keep. I personally select images by tagging them. This is done by selecting T on your keyboard and doing the same to untag the image.
In order to look at the full image, select it by clicking on one and pressing the spacebar on the keyboard. This allows for full image processing and goes just as quickly.
Lastly, in order to export, select the destination file and export to a folder representing the CULLED images of that event. The tagged images can be exported this way and imported to Lightroom, or uploading directly from Photo Mechanic to Lightroom for a quicker process.
