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Camera Bits Celebrates 25th Anniversary of Photo Mechanic
11 May 2023
To celebrate the 25th anniversary of Photo Mechanic, Camera Bits is offering a discount on its fast media browser that helps you view, organize, manage and export digital photos.
We can't remember when we started using Photo Mechanic to review our freshly archived shoots but it's been part of our routine for many years. It very quickly displays images from Raw data and makes it easy to evaluate the capture.
It's our idea of a digital contact sheet.
But it can do a lot more, including tag images with captions, copyrights and keywords and create HTML photo galleries for immediate upload.
A LITTLE HISTORY
Photo Mechanic has its roots in sports photojournalism. In fact, it received its baptism by fire at the Super Bowl.
"It was Sunday morning January 25th, 1998, and I was in The Associated Press' trailer in the parking lot at Qualcomm Stadium, San Diego," Dennis Walker recalled. "Last minute preparations were underway for coverage of Super Bowl XXXII between the Green Bay Packers and the Denver Broncos, Favre vs Elway.
"Perfect! This was a big day for me and my fledgling company, Camera Bits (which was just me doing business as). AP was willing to give Photo Mechanic its first real exercise to cover this big game even though PM wasn't for sale quite yet. It was at version 0.99 I recall."
Walker had to make one little change to version 0.99 at the stadium before the laptops left with the photographers to cover the game.
In those days of 1.3-megapixel sensors, the AP tagged digital images "DIGITAL PHOTO" in an IPTC field so editors would be warned not to crop them too tightly. But AP's coverage at the Super Bowl was all digital, so AP asked Walker to simply make that the default for the game.
It was a simple fix, Walker recalls, but Photo Mechanic was already at release 0.99. He decided to leave the version number at 0.99 but tag the new version as the Elway Release. He was rooting for Denver.
Everything went well, as Walker recounts in the full account.
"After this big game and seeing Photo Mechanic get put to a real test with no problems, I decided to release Photo Mechanic the next week (version 1.0.1 was available for download on Feb. 4, 1998). The Associated Press distributed Photo Mechanic as AP Viewer for a few years along with AP Filter," he wrote.
ANNIVERSARY SALE
From May 11 through 16, Camera Bits is offering special anniversary pricing on the tool that's been helping photographers hit critical deadlines for 25 years.
Photo Mechanic Plus Sale
- New License: $214
- Upgrade from Photo Mechanic 6: $85
- Upgrade from PM Version 5: $149
Photo Mechanic 6 Sale
- New License: $129
- Upgrade from PM Version 5: $84
A free 30-day trial is available from the Camera Bits site.