I love Lightroom, but if there's one thing that frustrates me, it's the speed (or lack thereof) with which it renders its 1:1 previews. And... you need those to check for sharpness, a rather essential criterion when you're separating the keepers from the rejects.
Speeding up your workflow with Photo Mechanic
That's why a lot of pro photographers have started to use Photo Mechanic, an extra piece of software, in their workflow. In the following video, I show you what Photo Mechanic can do as a 'front end' to Lightroom.
Photo Mechanic probably has only one drawback: its price tag of $150, although in itself not extravagant, seems to be a bit on the high side if you 'only' want to use it as a front-end to Lightroom...
The Big Deal Bundle
Well, I have some good news for you: if you like what you saw in the video, I would suggest NOT heading over to the Photo Mechanic website, but to the site of The Big Deal. This is a bundle consisting of over $3.000 worth of photography related software, ebooks, training videos, Lightroom presets, Photoshop actions and the like. The bundle is currently being offered for $99. And the best thing is... Photo Mechanic is included in The Big Deal. Not an old version or a time-delimited demo, but the real, fully workin, current version 5 (*). So, instead of forking out $150 for Photo Mechanic alone, you can get it at a 33% discount and in the mean time, download a very cool Joe McNally training vide on lighting, a compositing course by compositing guru Glyn Dewis, a tonne of Lightroom presets, some other cool software, including Clarity by Topaz Labs, Tonality by Macphun and much more.
Is this a permanent deal?
No, as with most of these bundles, there's a time-limit: you have to order before July 4th. So, if you're interested, head over to The Big Deal website and find out what else is included...
And don't forget, you'll not only be saving money but more importantly, you'll be saving precious time by culling your images with Photo Mechanic. And as time is money, you'll actually be saving money twice :-)
(*) Although the software itself is fully-functional, there are two things that I do want to tell you so you can make an informed decision: first of all, you can use this bundle version of Photo Mechanic on only one computer and second, the license is non-upgradeable. However, if you'll only be running it as a front-end to Lightroom in the way I describe in the video, the current version 5 has all it takes to do that, so you would not need an upgrade anytime soon anyway!