Camera Bits Encourages the Use of Industry Standard Software to Create Ideal Educational Experiences

Portland, OR (PRWEB) August 5, 2009 -- Camera Bits, Inc. (www.CameraBits.com), a pioneering provider of software for professional digital photographers, today announced that it offers a 15%-plus discount, which includes two years of upgrades, to any qualifying student, teacher, school administrator, school or district that purchases Photo Mechanic Version 4.6, the industry standard of photo browser and workflow accelerator software. Photo Mechanic is by far the most popular photo editing software used by professional photographers, photojournalists, major newspapers and news organizations, including The Associated Press, which standardized its workflow around Photo Mechanic, as well as the U.S. military and educational institutions.

Countless public and private K-12 students, teachers, schools and districts have been learning, teaching and using Photo Mechanic software to efficiently browse, caption and manage their digital images – some since its first release in 1998. Among those who have benefited from the software's powerful applications are the Lincoln Public Schools, the second largest school district in the state of Nebraska, community colleges like Hawkeye Community College in Waterloo, Iowa, and institutions of higher and continued learning including Boston University, Central Michigan University, Columbia School of Journalism, Brooks Institute, Rochester Institute of Technology, University of Texas at Austin, and Western Kentucky University.

One recent recipient of a significant discount on Photo Mechanic was New York City public schools' Jamaica Learning Center's fine arts department. This past spring, a class of 17 students used Photo Mechanic software for an assignment to capture and publish images from school trips in and around New York City in the school newspaper.

Photo Mechanic has also been incorporated into the daily work of the photojournalism students at the Poynter Institute. "I have been continually impressed and pleased with the software, and it was shortly after using Photo Mechanic for the first time that I realized it could transform our classrooms into fully-functioning newsrooms," said Kenny Irby, Visual Journalism Group Leader and founder of Poynter's photojournalism program. For more than a decade, Irby has worked closely with Camera Bits to test, refine and improve Photo Mechanic, while several thousand students have had the opportunity to work with the software at Poynter and recognize it as the premier image editing and organizational solution. "Photo Mechanic's features are unmatched," said Irby. "While it can be imitated, it certainly cannot be duplicated."

"We are thrilled to help students, educators and institutions of all sizes experience Photo Mechanic," said Dennis Walker, founder and president/CEO of Camera Bits. "It has become the industry standard for photographers to sort, manage and edit multiple images, and we believe that students should have the opportunity to learn about digital photography and photojournalism with the same tools they will be using as professionals. And, the ability of Photo Mechanic to run on relatively inexpensive, efficient and portable Netbooks is often the deciding factor for budget-minded students and schools that wish to use professional-grade photo editing software. Obviously, applications such as Apple's Aperture aren't designed for this class of hardware."

In June, Camera Bits announced it had surpassed the milestone of 35,000 licenses sold of its version 4.0+ Photo Mechanic software. The company also reported record sales of Photo Mechanic in its most recent quarter.

About Photo Mechanic
Photo Mechanic is a photo browser and workflow accelerator that has set the standards in its field for more than a decade. Users of the program can speed through the import, captioning, and editing process at a rate that goes unmatched, thanks to Photo Mechanic's straightforward design and wide range of customizable workflow tools. The program's powerful Ingest command reads images from memory cards, flattens directory structures, applies IPTC metadata, creates backups on separate disks and renames files - all in a single step. Photo Mechanic speeds through the editing of large numbers of photos to select keepers, rename, classify, and organize, and its many output options allow photographers to easily create Web galleries and slideshows, print contact sheets, transfer photos to an FTP server or upload them to an online archive, share photos via email, store favorites and much more.

About Photo Mechanic Version 4.6
Photo Mechanic Version 4.6 incorporates many innovative features, including:

• Live Ingest for importing photos from wireless or tethered shooting;

• Embedding of GPS coordinates in photos individually or in a batch using GPS log files;

• New Upload templates including Secure FTP, Amazon S3, DF Studio, ExposureManager, Flickr, Gallery 2, SmugMug, and Zenfolio;

• A Convert RAW to DNG command for convenient access to Adobe's DNG format converter;

• New Exporter templates for Goggle Earth, Soundslides, and HTML or Flash slideshows;

• A loupe tool in the Contact Sheet view;

• Text auto-completion to speed-up captioning;

• File upload status indicators in the Contact Sheet;

• Enhanced Code Replacement allowing multiple replacements for each code;

• An auto-advance after tagging feature in the Preview window

About Camera Bits
Camera Bits is a pioneering provider of software for professional digital photographers. Technology visionary and president/CEO Dennis Walker founded the company in 1996 with a simple purpose - design powerful, intuitive software that will improve the workflow of the digital photographer. Among the first of Camera Bits' innovative developments were the unified color artifact and noise filter Quantum Mechanic, moiré pattern reducer Moiré Eraser, and "banding" noise filter Band Aide. The success of these programs led to the development of the prize member of the Camera Bits' digital arsenal, Photo Mechanic, a photo browser and workflow accelerator that to-date is unmatched in its vast capabilities. To learn more about the history of Camera Bits, the technology behind its software, the man behind it all, on how to apply for educational discount, please visit www.CameraBits.com or call (503) 547-2800.

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