Ingest and cull with Photomechanic instead of Lightroom?

[Roelof Moorlag]

I made my workflow as efficient as i could the last years by eliminating all different programs i used and consolidate everything into lightroom. So no more "best-of-breed", an idea that i originally (and still) like.
However, i made to many mistakes by all manual steps, it costed to much time and i get behind with my work.
When Phase One did not pick up the development of Expression Media as i hoped for i made the choice to migrate to Lightroom. To integrate all steps in a way Adobe had devised out did cost me a lot of time but i'm there now.

Now i think i fully understand the ingestion proces. Also did not like the changes Adobe made a few iterations back (and reverted them after all comments).
In my opinion however the ingestion proces can do a lot better. I have looked at Photomechanic and they prove it can.

Previously i thought that people used Photomechanic as an alternative to lightroom and perhaps that is the case but I get the impression that a lot off them use it in combination with each other: ingest and culling with Photomechanic and RAW development and management in Lightroom.

I'm not fond of expanding my workflow again (after al my consolidating). However it's looks like Photomechanic brings some major benefits: much more faster ingestion/culling proces.
What are your experiences with this combo?
Are there any signs Adobe is developing some major imrovements in the ingestion module that would made my consideration obsolete?

 

[tspear]

I don't think Import is missing fundamental options - if anything, I agreed with the 6.1 changes - but my perspective would be quite close to Linwood's.

I liked the intent of the changes, but I think it was very poorly done and very confusing.

 

[Linwood Ferguson]

Also, I may wish to import images for just a specific date or range of dates. I do not want to have to import them all and then delete the unwanted images afterwards.

Lr should provide easy user options to import based on file type and date. [And I think the 6.1 changes were an absolute disaster]

I agree with that last sentence primarily because I hate for flexibility to be removed in the name of dumbing a product down.

It may be relevant to the original topic to mention that PM does offer a lot more options for dealing with raw + jpg than Lightroom, separate decisions on what to show for metadata, etc. I never exercised them as I never shoot jpg. Also, one thing I do not like about PM (unless I've just missed an option) is that its ingestion into dated folders is by TODAY's date, not capture date.

You've mentioned dates a couple times, just to make sure you know... if you are importing with automatic creation of folders by date, you can use that during the import to select. Here's an example, I set to import two files with different dates. On the folder display it shows how many are being imported for each one and shows a check (or a dash if some are already there). You can just remove the mark (check or dash) for any days you do NOT want to import. It's not quite a matter of selecting what you want, but selecting what to omit (which in some way I think is more fail safe). There's also a ribbon at the top/center that lets you break the icons up into sections by destination folder with a check box if you want to see previews of which will be selected in which date, just to be sure.

Now admittedly that doesn't work unless you are targetting date specific folders. I don't know how to do it explicitly otherwise; you can sort by capture time and do it by eye, but it doesn't show the actual date in the icons.

Also, you can sort by media type which groups all the JPG and raw together (separately). If you want just raw, click on the first JPG, shift-click on the last JPG, click the select box (to de-select). You can do the same with capture date

Both are a tad arcane, but neither really takes a lot of effort. And (to your last point) it's because they did NOT dumb down the screen, you still have some abilities.

 

[Gnits]

Also, you can sort by media type which groups all the JPG and raw together (separately). If you want just raw, click on the first JPG, shift-click on the last JPG, click the select box (to de-select). You can do the same with capture date

I might explore this at a later date. Thanks for the heads up. I have no strong incentive to change my current import routine, but who knows what the future might bring.