PORTLAND, Ore. -- Camera Bits, Inc., a pioneer in the development of software for professional digital photographers, has announced a feature-packed update to its popular Photo Mechanic photo browser and workflow tool. Version 4.6 of Photo Mechanic, which is expected to ship by the middle of February, is loaded with new features and enhancements aimed to please demanding photographers who work with large numbers of digital photos.

Since its original release in February 1998, Photo Mechanic has been a mainstay of professional photojournalists in need of software to help them efficiently browse, caption and manage digital photos. Photo Mechanic is by far the most popular photo-editing tool used by newspapers and press photographers in the USA and agencies such as The Associated Press have standardized their workflow around Photo Mechanic.

Camera Bits Listens

Camera Bits has a reputation for outstanding customer support, which means they listen to the needs of their customers and act upon their suggestions. So in addition to adding new features that make a difference, Camera Bits continually improves upon existing features to make what's already great even better. Not only will the efficiency of your existing workflow improve, you may discover new options that enable you to provide new services.

Going Wireless?

Photo Mechanic 4.6 has a new command called Live Ingest. This command watches a number of folders for incoming photos such as from a camera shooting with a wireless transmitter. New photos are processed by as many as three separate destination steps. For example, the first destination could be a simple copy to a backup directory and the second destination could include several options such as renaming and applying of IPTC information.

Going Somewhere with a GPS?

Photo Mechanic 4.6 has several new features that enhance geo-tagging of photos. You can individually set and embed the GPS coordinates of photos by manually entering their coordinates or by selecting a point on a map. And if you carry a GPS logging device while shooting photos, Photo Mechanic can import the log files, plot the path of the GPS coordinates on a map and calculate the interpolated GPS coordinates of all the photos within the time range of the logs. There is even a handy way to move through the GPS log coordinate path in order to obtain the best time match between your camera and the GPS time reference.

Need to Upload or Share?

Photo Mechanic 4.6 includes several new Upload templates such as Secure FTP, Amazon S3, ExposureManager, Flickr, Gallery 2, SmugMug and Zenfolio. If you are a Ruby programmer, you can create your own Upload plug-in.

Need to Improve Your Look?

Photo Mechanic 4.6 includes several new Export templates such as a customizable HTML Template Exporter, a full screen Flash Slide Show, Google Earth KMZ and Soundslides.

Need to Standardize Your Preferences?

Photo Mechanic 4.6 can export and import nearly all of its preference settings. This makes it easy to setup multiple computers with a common set of operating preferences. You can even export/import between Mac and Windows computers.

Some of the other new features in Photo Mechanic 4.6 include:

• Customizations for The Associated Press to support their controlled vocabulary.

• Code Replacements that can include multiple replacements identified using a #2, #3, etc. code suffix.

• A Convert Raw to DNG command.

• Text Autocompletion entry in the IPTC dialogs using words from the popup menu lists.

• A graphical indicator on the thumbnails of photos that are being uploaded. Now you can see and select the photos that have already been sent or those that are still in the transmit queue.

Version 4.6 of Photo Mechanic is a free update for users who purchased licenses for Photo Mechanic on or after Feb. 1, 2008 (or Feb. 1, 2007 for educational licenses). Upgrades to Version 4.6 from older 4.x licenses purchased earlier than the above dates cost $90. New licenses for Photo Mechanic cost $150.

In order to help curb the expected inundation of upgrade orders once Version 4.6 is released, Camera Bits is offering a discount of $15 for new licenses and $10 for upgrade orders placed prior to the release of Version 4.6. Visit the Camera Bits Web site at http://www.camerabits.com or call us at (503) 547-2800 for more info.