All Keyboard Shortcuts 

    You can use the preview window to examine a single or set of photos. You can use the preview window in combination with keyboard shortcuts to quickly cull and rate photos. In addition, the preview window displays a concentration of metadata and other information about the photo. 

    The Preview window appears when you hit the spacebar in a contact sheet,  select the magnifying glass button on a thumbnail in a contact sheet or, with at least one thumbnail selected, use the keyboard shortcut of command-R on macOS or Control-R on Windows. 

    The preview window, by default, displays two panes: The thumbnail strip and the info pane. Both are resizable by dragging. The thumbnail strip shows the photos adjacent to the preview photo. Use the buttons to display all photos in the contact sheet or just the photo or photos you currently have selected.  

The Info Pane

    The Info Panel, by default, will be on the right edge of the Preview window. The Info Panel consists collapsible panels that provide information about your images, as well as some helpful tools for reviewing your images. Click the triangle next to the title of each panel to collapse or reveal its information or tools.

• Info
  • The Info Panel displays information about the image that is currently shown in the main area of the Preview window.  Below is an example of the default information shown in the Info Panel:
  • This list is also completely customizable. To customize what information appears in the Info panel, click the Edit menu, move your cursor to the Settings entry, and choose Set Info Text...from the submenu.
    • The contents of the Set Info Text panel will mirror what you see in the Info panel, however, in place of the metadata from the image, you will see the Variables that tell Photo Mechanic which metadata you want to see. You can use any valid variables in this panel
      • Click here to find out more about Variables
  • You can control the height of the Info panel and scale its text
    • Click the + button to make the panel taller, or the - button to shrink it
    • Click the dropdown menu displaying the percentage to choose how to scale the text
  • If you would like to quickly switch between sets of metadata shown in the Info panel, create a Snapshot in the Set Info Text window and it will then be a selectable option in the Snapshot menu above the Info Panel.
• Crop
• Zoom

• Histogram

• Highlights & Shadows

    The control buttons allow you to: navigate to the previous and next photo in the thumbnail strip, remove or add photos from the set, rotate photos, open the Metadata (IPTC) Information tool, open the photo in an external editor, copy photos, delete the photo, view single or 2-Up images, change the thumbnail strip orientation (vertical or horizontal), and hide or restore the panes, and toggle color management on and off. 

    Hover above a button to find out what it does. You can also use keyboard shortcuts for all of these actions.