Ingest straight from your SD card, cull fast, then type a jersey number and Metadata Express fills in the athlete's name. It writes the keywords and a Getty-style caption into every photo and sends them to your editors or Lightroom.
Mac & Windows · Your photos never leave your computer · Cancel anytime
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, so they match the athletes' accounts every time. Tagged names turn green.
"Player of the Team during the A vs. B game at Stadium on Date. (Photo by You)". Written for you, or add 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.
Plug in an SD card and choose to ingest 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. Only new photos are copied.
Sony, Canon, Nikon and Fujifilm RAW (or JPEG). See the stars you gave them on the camera, tag and color-label with one key, keep favorite folders in the sidebar, then caption your picks and send them to Lightroom.
Deliver photos to Dropbox, Google Drive, Box, OneDrive or an FTP / SFTP server in the background while you keep shooting, or automatically the moment a card is ingested. Captions and tags travel with them.
Add the official stats PDF and get caption ideas from the actual plays, like "catches a 41-yard pass".
See your seconds per photo, your average and your personal best, then try to beat it. Plus your top 10 most-photographed players, so nobody gets missed.
Go back, change a tag and save. The photo's file is rewritten, and its caption follows the new name.
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.
Everything runs on your computer and works without internet. Standard IPTC and XMP metadata that Lightroom, wire services and most photo platforms read.
Byline, credit, copyright, usage terms, city, venue, headline, job ID, categories and more. Save templates by client or team; they're written to every photo you tag, or to a whole folder at once.
Only the fields you change are written. Your existing byline, location, instructions, ratings and camera data stay exactly as they were.
Load the opponent's roster too. Numbers bring up players from both sides, and each caption names the right team.
Turn it on and 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.
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: ingest 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 5 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 5-day trial includes every feature.
Free for 5 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.
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 on your computer and writes the metadata into the files themselves. Your photos, rosters and captions never leave your computer.
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 Ingest / 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 ingest a card. Passwords are kept in your computer's keychain.
Tagging and captions work with JPEG files. Cull mode opens JPEG and RAW files from Sony, Canon, Nikon and Fujifilm cameras (.ARW, .CR3, .CR2, .NEF, .RAF).
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. Send a suggestion; 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