Getting started and ingest
Set your MatchID settings and metadata template
Set these once. They decide which people MatchID compares against, how sure it has to be before it writes a name, and which fields the name goes to.
Where the settings are
- 1
Open Settings
Press ⌘,. - 2
MatchID Settings
Scope, tuning, blurry faces and face size. Everything on this page except the template. - 3
MatchID Metadata
The Default template: which fields a name is written to when someone is tagged.
The defaults are calibrated for team sports. Start with them and only change a setting when Review tells you to.
Scope
Which indexed people MatchID compares each photo against.
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Job roster (default) | Only the teams set for the folder. A match photo only sees the two teams on the field. |
| Entire Database | Each person you've ever indexed. Slower, and more look-alikes to pick from. |
One team beats the whole library, for speed and for accuracy. Use Entire Database only when a folder has no roster set yet.
Tuning
Required confidence
Where auto-approve starts.
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Standard (default) | Most auto-approves. |
| Cautious | Fewer auto-approves, more in Review. |
| Strict | Fewest auto-approves, most in Review. |
Strict isn’t the “better” setting. It auto-approves less and sends more faces to Review for you to confirm.
Review depth
Where the Review queue stops, separate from where auto-approve starts.
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| All matches (default) | The deepest queue. |
| Fewer weak | Hides the weakest matches. |
| Strongest only | The shortest queue. |
Tightening it hides matches, it never discards them. Switch back and they reappear without reprocessing.
Auto-approve and Reference learning
| Setting | On | Off |
|---|---|---|
| Auto-approve | Matches at or above the confidence level are approved and written straight away. The rest go to Review. | Each match goes to Review. Nothing is written until you confirm it. |
| Reference learning | Faces you add as references in Review improve later matching. Takes effect on the next job. | References are kept but not used for matching. |
Names are confirmed. Never guessed. A name is written one of two ways: you confirm it, or it clears the confidence line you set here.
Skip blurry faces
How hard MatchID drops out-of-focus faces before they reach Review. Motion blur strips the detail recognition depends on, so a blurry match is more likely wrong than right.
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| Off | Keeps everything. |
| Low | Drops heavy blur. |
| Medium | Drops obvious blur. |
| High | Keeps only sharp faces. |
Start at Medium. If too many soft faces land in Review, move to High and run it again. Action frames score lower than portraits, so pick by what you photographed.
This is about faces at match time. Flagging whole frames as blurry is Blur Cull, a separate setting under Browse & Preview.
Face size
The smallest face MatchID tries to identify, measured against the largest face in each photo.
| Option | What it does |
|---|---|
| More faces | Includes smaller faces, background and action players. |
| Balanced (recommended) | The middle ground. |
| Fewer faces | Prominent faces only. Keeps spectators and the far bench out of Review. |
The Default template
The Default template decides which fields get a name when someone is tagged, by MatchID or from a roster with CaptionID. Any folder without a template of its own uses it.
- 1
Open it
Settings ▸ MatchID Metadata ▸ Edit default template… opens the ⌘I editor in Default template mode. - 2
Place the tokens
Put{person_name},{jersey_number}or a long form such as{matchid_long2}in the fields you want written. - 3
Save as Default
New folders start from it. The Person Defaults button in the editor copies its token placement into any other template.
Tokens only fill in when a person is tagged, so the same template works on the whole folder. The file only ever gets finished text, never a raw token.
Good to know
- •⌘I is also the one-off editor. Type a roster code between delimiters, such as
\h1\, in any field to expand it. - •Names write to the file in XMP and IPTC metadata, with a sidecar for RAW. Photo Mechanic, Lightroom and Capture One read them, and the names go wherever the file goes.
- •Nothing is locked in the app.