GalleryID Desktop does the ingest, culling and IPTC work you already know, then adds facial recognition, jersey numbers, and rosters that follow the folder. No codes to memorize. No text file to keep current.
In Photo Mechanic you type a code and it expands, which means you built that code replacement file and you keep it current. Here the roster is on screen. Click a player and the value lands in the fields you chose, one field or several, in a single press.
Want a player’s name in different fields? Change the mapping. There is no template to reapply, nothing to memorize, and nothing to rebuild mid-season when a number changes.
One press inserts the person name and the long form into the fields you chose. Code replacement values still work if you want them, so nothing was taken away.
Open a different event and the right roster is already there. No swapping code files between games, and subfolders inherit unless you say otherwise.
NCAA D1 football, men’s and women’s basketball, plus the US pro leagues, kept current in the app. Build one in the app, or upload your own as .xlsx, .xls, .csv, .tsv or .txt. The delimiter is detected for you.
MatchID names the frames it recognizes before you open them. Roster tagging is there for people you have not indexed yet, or anything you would rather set by hand.
That is a fair thing to believe, because the recognition built into consumer photo apps really does fall apart here. Those models learned from photos where people face the camera. Action photography is the opposite: motion blur, heads turned away, athletes at distance, bodies in the frame, helmets.
MatchID was trained on a large archive of sports photography instead of ordinary photos, and reads jersey numbers when there is no face to read.
We are not going to tell you it gets there on the first pass. Some frames need a person to look at them, and a few need adding by hand. Those land in a review queue, where one click from the roster finishes the job.
Checked against published pricing and product documentation.
| Capability | GalleryID DesktopMac & Windows | Photo Mechanicand Photo Mechanic Plus | Lightroom ClassicAdobe | Sideline CaptionsMac only | Caption ProMac & Windows |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Facial recognition | Trained on sports photos | Consumer model, no roster | |||
| Reads jersey numbersFor helmets, and faces turned away | |||||
| Tag from the roster in one clickNo codes to type or memorize | Name + long form together | Code replacement | Correcting AI output, not tag-from-blank | ||
| Roster follows the folderNo swapping between events | Subfolders inherit | ||||
| League rosters built in | D1 FB, MBB, WBB + US pro | Build your own file | 250+ leagues | Lists you build | |
| Bring your own roster, any common format | Or build one in the app | Tab-delimited text only | |||
| Ingest, cull, ratings, colour labels | Filters, and auto-applies after captioning | Watch-folder ingest only | |||
| Tone and colour adjustmentsPhoto Mechanic crops, but does not tone | |||||
| IPTC and XMP templates | App, org and folder levels | Static presets, no variables | |||
| FTP delivery from the export step | FTP and FTPS | 16 destinations | Plugin, or Web module only | Receives by FTP, sends galleries | |
| Runs on Windows | Mac today, Windows in development | ||||
| Unmetered, no AI credits | Runs on your machine | 500 AI processes/mo on entry | |||
| Price | $20/mo+$10 per extra device | $14.99/moor $299 perpetual | from $14.99/moLightroom 1TB plan | $14.99/moor $249 lifetime | from £7.99/mometered |
Verified August 2026. If something here is out of date, tell us and we will correct it.
Photo Mechanic has enhancements Desktop does not, including more FTP destinations. Desktop was built around facial recognition running on your own machine. Metadata reads across both, so if Photo Mechanic has a place in your sports photography workflow, the two sit side by side. Your existing code replacement values keep working here either way.
You handle the camera.
We’ll handle the names.
14 days free on Mac or Windows. No credit card.
$20/month for the first device, $10 for each one after.
Photo Mechanic, Lightroom, Sideline Captions and Caption Pro are trademarks of their respective owners. GalleryID is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by any of them, and the names are used here only to identify the products being compared. Feature details reflect each vendor’s published documentation as of August 2026 and may have changed since.