Photo Mechanic™ Version 4.4.3.2 History

Below is a list of changes made to Photo Mechanic for Version 4.4.3.2, released August 2, 2006.

This version is available as a free update for registrations good through November 2005.

• Added code to handle improperly formatted DNG files with blank TIFF tags appended to the TIFF table. These improperly formatted files were causing problems when updating IPTC/XMP, causing metadata to be lost. The Revert TIFF-based RAW command, however, can undo edits made on these improperly-formatted DNG files.
  
• Added code to handle improperly formatted JPEG files that contained extra 0xFF bytes in-between the markers. This was resulting in no preview displays for the improperly-formatted JPEG photos.
  
• Fixed a critical copy/ingest bug with files handled by QuickTime (primarily movie formats) which would overwrite the destination file with the image preference data.
  
• DNG files are now treated like TIFF files with respect to updating IPTC and XMP. Previously, DNG files were treated like proprietary TIFF-based RAW files, resulting in XMP sidecar files always being created if the IPTC/XMP update preferences were set to not embed either IPTC or XMP. Now captioning edits to DNG files will always embed either IPTC or XMP or both (according to the IPTC/XMP preferences).
  
• Removed Lexar Active Memory support.
  
• Users can now choose the delimiter character for code replacement (because the ‘\’ character is difficult to type on many non-US keyboards). Also relaxed restrictions on code replacement codes by trimming white space inadvertently included before or after the code.
  
• Added basic support for Pentax RAW files (PEF).
  
• (Mac) Drag and drop now works more like the Finder by allowing files to be overwritten rather than automatically renamed (as with the Copy command). For filenames that already exist in the destination folder, you will be asked whether you want to replace, stop, or don’t replace similarly-named files.
  
• (Mac) Added a new “Generate Finder Icons…” command in the Tools menu.
  
• (Mac) Fixed potential crashing problem with Mac OS X after navigating to a folder that didn’t exist.
  
• (Win) The Navigator can now expand paths outside of My Documents.
  
• Click and hold on thumbnail control in IPTC and Adjust Capture Times dialogs will display a zoomed version. Alt-Z (Windows) or Control-Z (Mac) will also zoom the photo.
  
• Watermark text sizing can now use greater than 128 point fonts.
  
• Added GPS variables {gpsdirref} (or {gdrf}) and {trackref} (or {gtrf}) for direction reference, either “magnetic” or “true”. Also added {gpsdif} (or {gdif}) for whether or not differential correction has been applied the GPS receiver (returns either “yes” or “no”).
  
• Added Exif variables {meteringmode} (or {mmod}) and {lightsource} (or {lsrc}).
  
• Improved sizing of thumbnails when printing contact sheets.
  
• Improved speed of switching back to Photo Mechanic when no files are missing during the rescan.
  
• (Mac) Fixed a problem where the IPTC date would get changed to today’s date when clicking on the date’s “apply” checkbox. Also fixed a problem where clicking on the Today button would not change the date properly if you were currently editing the date control.
  
• Fixed a problem with the Preview histogram where editing a photo (tag, color class, rotation, etc) would cause the histograms to be recalculated using lower resolution data.
  
• JPEG photos that cannot be rotated losslessly no longer leave “._21_ROT” files behind.
  
• Relaxed restrictions on the prior destination path existing when the FTP dialog is skipped by using the Shift (Windows) or Option (Mac) modifier.
  
• Disc burning is now “application modal” to prevent a user from causing a bad disc to be burned.
  
• (Mac) Folder labels now use text from the Finder for label descriptions in the contextual menu.

PM History Homepage