Type a jersey number and Metadata Express fills in the athlete's name: keywords and a Getty-style caption in every photo, and a clear name on every video clip as you watch it. Import straight from your SD card, cull fast, then send it all to your editors or Lightroom.
Free 14-day trial · Cancel anytime · Your files never leave your computer · No AI versions
Made by a working sports photographer for game-day speed: keyboard-first, accurate names, captions that read like the wire.
Type 8 and press Enter. Your roster turns numbers, positions and short codes into exact names for both teams, so they match the athletes' accounts every time. Go back and fix any photo; its caption follows.
"Player of the Team during the A vs. B game at Stadium on Date. (Photo by You)". Written for you, with caption ideas from the official score sheet, or your own sentence in one keystroke.
Reads jersey numbers and learns faces while you tag, then offers the names. It runs on your computer, not in the cloud. Optional, and there's a No AI version.
Plug in an SD card and import it or look through it first. Name folders and files with variables like {date}_{event}_{seq}, make a backup copy, add your IPTC template, or take just the photos you locked on the camera.
RAW files from every major camera or JPEG. See the stars you gave them on the camera, tag and color-label with one key, then caption your picks and send them to Lightroom.
Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, OneDrive or an FTP / SFTP server, in the background while you keep shooting, or the moment a card is imported. Photos and video clips.
Paste a team's roster page (college sites, ESPN, NFL, NBA, NHL, MLB, MLS) or build one right in the app, even offline. Your own spellings are always kept.
Byline, credit, copyright, usage terms, location, job ID and more, saved by client or team. Only the fields you change are written; everything already in your photos is kept.
Every photo you save is renamed after its players: KJDuffJr1, KJDuffJr2… Pick LastFirst, Last_First, Last, FirstLast or First_Last; numbering carries on across games.
Your seconds per photo, your average and your personal best, plus your top 10 most-photographed players, so nobody gets missed.
Keyboard-first from the start, and now every shortcut is yours to change: click a key, press the new one. Clashes are caught, and Reset puts the defaults back.
Everything runs on your computer and works without internet. Standard IPTC and XMP that Lightroom, wire services and most photo platforms read.
Label Clips: watch each clip, type its name the same way you tag photos, and move on. Built for sports video teams who rename every clip after the game. It's in beta: it works today, and we're still making it better, so tell us what you'd like.
Type 12 and Enter for the player's last name, add the play with your own short codes (pc → pass complete to), then + to rename and go to the next clip, or ⌘S to rename and stay.
Sony XAVC (MXF and MP4), ProRes, DNxHD / DNxHR, H.264 and HEVC from phones and mirrorless cameras, XDCAM, AVCHD and GoPro. Smooth scrubbing in 4K.
Mark In and Out or star your best clips, then export a timeline for Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve, trimmed and already named. How it works.
Send clips to the same Dropbox, Drive or FTP destinations as your photos, or copy and move them to another drive. Sony's clip files travel along.
Every sport labels differently. Make your own codes for the plays you shoot and the words your team uses, and set the keys the way you like them.
Set up the game once (matchup, venue, date, photographer) and every tagged photo gets a complete, properly worded caption.
Plug in a card and Metadata Express asks what to do: import it, or open it to pick the shots first. Thumbnails appear straight from your RAW files. Tag with T, color-label with 1–5, and filter by the stars or locks you set on the camera.
Metadata Express times every photo you tag. Click the chart icon, or press ⌘T, to see your seconds per photo this session, your average and your personal best, plus your top 10 most-photographed players.
Your roster (how to make one), photographer, team and IPTC template are remembered between games. Add the score sheet for play-by-play caption ideas, and turn on AI Suggest if you want it.
Every feature, on up to two computers, with all updates included.
$9.99
per month
$99
per year (about $8.25/month)
Try everything free for 14 days. No card needed for the trial. Prices in US dollars; sales tax or VAT is added where required.
Download, open and start tagging. The 14-day trial includes every feature.
Free for 14 days, no card needed. About 340 MB (Mac) or 165 MB (Windows).
Need a version with no AI at all? The No AI version leaves out AI Suggest completely; everything else is the same. No AI for Mac · No AI for Windows
You only do this once; after that it opens like any other app and updates itself.
You only do this once; after that it updates itself.
Mac: Apple silicon (M1 or newer), macOS 13 Ventura or later. AI Suggest needs 16 GB of memory and a one-time ~6 GB download.
Windows: 64-bit Windows 10 or 11. AI Suggest needs 16 GB of memory, an NVIDIA graphics card with 8 GB of video memory, and a one-time ~6 GB download.
I'm a photographer and videographer for a sports team in New Jersey, and I've been shooting sports since 2017. I got into creative work in college, when I found out engineering just wasn't for me and I wanted something that would activate the creative part of my brain. Photography and video do that for me.
We used to tag all our photos after exporting them, on an athlete delivery app. Tagging the players took forever. When we switched to Greenfly, we found out it could put a photo in the right player's gallery if the keywords in the metadata included the player's name exactly as it is on the Greenfly roster. We tried other apps, but it was still tedious and time consuming.
So I built this for our team over the summer, as a fun project during the long days of training camp. There were plenty of issues at first, since I'm not a software developer. I used Claude to help me, because that was the only way I could get it to do what I needed.
Once the metadata part was working, we wanted to see how far we could take it. So we kept adding the features that help our own workflow: importing straight from the card, culling, and sending photos to our editors. If it helps us, we figure it can help others too.
After six weeks of our in-house photographers, editors, interns and me using it every game, I wanted to share it. It saves us a lot of time after games, and adding metadata is honestly more enjoyable now. In a timed test, I tagged 1,000 photos an hour faster than with the tool we used before.
The subscription isn't about getting rich. Building and keeping something like this running has real costs: development tools, the website, payment processing and the updates that keep it working. The 14-day free trial is there so you can decide for yourself if it's worth it.
Adam
Sports photographer & videographer
Only if you want it to. Tagging, captions, culling and Lightroom transfer use no AI: you type a number and it looks the name up in your own roster. AI Suggest is optional, off by default, and runs only on your computer. If your clients require no AI at all, download the No AI version: it doesn't include any AI software, and it updates only to No AI versions.
No. Metadata Express works on the photos and video clips on your computer and writes the metadata into the files themselves. Your files, rosters and captions never leave your computer unless you send them.
It's a simple text file: one line per athlete with their jersey number and name. Follow our step-by-step roster guide (with examples to download), build one in the app (click the i next to Roster in Session Setup), or let Metadata Express make one from the team's roster page.
Yes. Click Send… in Import / Cull and add a destination: your Dropbox, Google Drive, Box or OneDrive folder (found automatically; their app uploads it), or an FTP / SFTP server from your outlet or team. Photos go in the background, JPEGs only if you like, and can go automatically right after you import a card. Passwords are kept in your computer's keychain.
JPEG and RAW files from every major camera: Sony, Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, OM System / Olympus, Panasonic, Pentax, Ricoh, Leica, Hasselblad, Phase One, Sigma and DNG. Tags and captions go inside JPEGs and into an .xmp file next to each RAW, which Lightroom and other photo software read.
Yes, with Label Clips, now in beta: it works today and we're still making it better. It plays your clips (MXF, MOV and MP4 from Sony, Canon, Panasonic, Fujifilm, Nikon, phones and GoPro, including XAVC, ProRes, DNxHD and HEVC) and lets you rename each one as you watch: a jersey number and Enter puts in the player, your own codes add the play. Mark In / Out and export your selects as a timeline for Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro or DaVinci Resolve. Camera RAW video (BRAW, R3D) can be renamed and sent, but needs the camera maker's software to play.
Metadata Express writes standard IPTC and XMP keywords and captions, the same fields Lightroom, wire services and most photo-sharing and athlete-delivery platforms read.
Yes. In Session Setup, tick Rename photos with player names when saving and choose a style: DuffJrKJ1, DuffJr_KJ_1, DUFFJR_1, KJDuffJr1 or KJ_DuffJr_1. Photos with several players get every name (KJDuffJr_JesseOfurie1), numbers continue from what's already in the folder so nothing is overwritten, and the tags and captions are still written as usual.
No. Metadata Express only writes the caption, keywords, the people shown and the template fields you fill in. Everything else already in your photos (byline, location, instructions, ratings, camera data) is kept. You can also build your full template right in the app.
Yes. It needs a connection once every 7 days to confirm your subscription, and once to download AI Suggest if you turn it on.
Yes. Each subscription works on 2 computers. You can move it to a new computer anytime from About & License > Deactivate.
Open Manage subscription (or About & License › Manage Subscription in the app) and sign in with the email you subscribed with. You can switch between monthly and yearly, update your card, or cancel. If you cancel, you keep using Metadata Express until the end of the period you paid for and won't be charged again. See our refund policy.
Yes. Download for Windows above. Your subscription's 2 computers can be any mix of Mac and Windows.
Please do. Click 💡 Got an idea? (or Suggest a feature) in the app, send a suggestion here, or email suggestions@metadataexpress.com. Every one is read by the person who builds Metadata Express.
Send us a message through the contact form and we'll reply by email.
Metadata Express