Getting started and ingest

Ingest from a card

Card to folder, named on the way. One pass copies the frames, renames them, files them into a folder and writes your metadata to them.

Open the dialog Profiles Source Destination Rename Metadata and roster IPTC for this ingest After the copy Video and audio Token reference Troubleshooting

Open the dialog

The Ingest from card dialog with a Leica Q3 card selected, the destination, rename pattern and token rail — The whole dialog. The Tokens rail on the right inserts into whichever pattern field you clicked last.

1
Open it
Press ⌘G, or plug in a card and the dialog opens on it.
2
Work down the dialog
Source, destination, rename pattern, then the metadata rows. Each block is covered below in the same order.
3
Copy
The button at the bottom counts what's about to move, for example Copy 84 photos. It reads Move when Move mode is on.

Close the dialog and the ingest keeps running, with a toast tracking it.

Profiles

The Profile bar at the top of the dialog.

A profile remembers the whole dialog. Set one up per kind of job, say one for volleyball at home and one for football on the road, and pick it from the list.

Control	What it does
Profile list	Loads a saved setup. A dot after the name means you have changed it since it was saved.
Save	Writes your changes back to the selected profile. Greyed out until something changes.
Save As…	Saves the current setup under a new name.
Manage…	Rename or delete profiles.
Unsaved changes	Shows when the dialog has drifted from the profile.

Your last setup is remembered on its own. The next card opens where you left off (the bar says Picked up where you left off), even if you never saved a profile.

Source

Mounted cards are listed with a CARD badge and their size. Click more than one and the photos merge into one batch with one run of sequence numbers, which is how a two-slot body or a second photographer's card comes in together. The count above the list tells you how many photos and files it found, RAW and JPEG broken out.

Option	What it does
Refresh	Rescans mounted drives and cards.
Choose folder…	Adds any folder to the source list, not just a card.
Subfolders	Pulls photos from subfolders of the source too, not just the top level.
Skip existing	Copies new photos only. Files already at the destination are left alone. Re-insert a card you already ingested and it decides "nothing new" in a moment, ejects the card if that’s ticked, and closes.
Protected first	Copies and captions your in-camera selects ahead of the rest, so they’re in Browse first. Filenames and sequence numbers don’t change, only the copy order.
Focus check	Scores the ingest for blur and soft faces once the copy finishes. BLUR and SOFT flags stream into Browse, protected photos first. It never slows the copy.
Files: Both / JPEG only / RAW only	Which half of a RAW+JPEG pair comes across. The other type stays on the card.

Ingest JPEG only now and RAW later, and the second run gets its own sequence numbers. The pair won't share a name. Use Both if you want them to match.

Skip existing off and some names already exist at the destination? The dialog asks first. Continue and each duplicate gets a letter suffix (imgA, imgB), so nothing is overwritten.

Destination

Option	What it does
Destination + Pick…	The parent folder. Required: the Copy button stays dead until it’s set.
Into folder above	Photos go straight into the destination folder.
Create sub-folder from pattern	Makes a new folder inside the destination, named from the pattern. Default: `{date} Ingest`.

How the folder pattern behaves

•The pattern is worked out per photo. With {date} in it, a card that spans two days lands in two date folders.
•{seq} in a folder pattern is the next unused number at the destination, so each run gets a new folder: 01, 02, 03.
•Skip existing still recognises a card you already ingested by looking in those earlier folders.
•IPTC tokens work here too. {headline} in the folder pattern picks up the headline you type under IPTC for this ingest.
•A pattern that comes out empty for these photos turns red and says so, rather than leaving you with a dead Copy button.

Rename pattern

Tick Rename files on ingest and each file is named from the pattern. Untick it and files keep their original names. The default is {date}_{name}_{seq}.

Option	What it does
Seq digits	Width of `{seq}`, 1 to 6. `{seq:4}` overrides it for one token.
Start at	The first number. Greyed out on Continue per folder, which picks it up from the folder.
Numbering: Start at value	Starts at the number above each time.
Numbering: Continue across ingests	One counter that keeps running from one ingest to the next.
Numbering: Continue per folder	A counter per destination folder. A new folder starts at 1, and adding to a folder carries on where it ended.

A pattern needs at least one token. A fixed name would give each photo the same filename, so the dialog refuses it and marks the field red.

A slash in the pattern nests subfolders: {date}/{name}_{seq}. Photo Mechanic's variable names work too, so {head}, {iptcyear4} and {fldr} paste straight in from a PM setup. Each token is in the rail on the right of the dialog and in the token reference below.

Mode, metadata and roster

Mode

Option	What it does
Copy (keep originals)	The default. The card is untouched. Stay here until your backup is done.
Move (delete from source)	Deletes the files from the card once they’re copied.

XMP

Option	What it does
Apply XMP sidecars	Picks up .xmp files sitting beside the photos. Written to JPEG and TIFF, copied alongside RAW.
Overwrite existing	Only with sidecars on. Clears the file’s own XMP and IPTC before the sidecar is applied, instead of merging.
Apply XMP template	Writes a saved `⌘I` template to each photo as it copies. Pick the template in the list beside it.

Roster, ExifID and MatchID

All three are set on the destination folder after the copy has made it, so the photos arrive ready to tag.

Row	What it does
Roster	Pick a saved roster, or Import… a file and it's added and selected. If the folder already has a roster, the row warns that this one replaces it. See Set a roster on a folder.
ExifID	Automatic uses the template's set, or else the destination folder's. Pick a set to override it. Fills `{exif_b}` to `{exif_f}` as the files copy. See Fill fields from the camera with ExifID.
MatchID	Choose… the teams MatchID should compare against. Set on each folder this ingest writes, so Who is this? works on the first frame. Clear leaves the folders' scope alone.

IPTC for this ingest

Shows when Apply XMP template is on. It lists the fields that template fills, so you can type the event line once here, for example the headline for tonight's game, and keep the template itself generic.

•Edits apply to these photos only. The saved template isn't changed.
•An edited field is marked edited, and Revert puts them all back.
•A field marked token holds tokens like {person_name} that fill in per photo. Typing over it replaces that with fixed text.
•What you type here also feeds IPTC tokens in the folder and file patterns.

Building the template itself, and the full list of caption tokens, is in Build an IPTC template with tokens.

After the copy

The After row: Open destination in Browse and Eject card ticked, Next time start automatically unticked — Shown when the source is a card.

Option	What it does
Open destination in Browse	Jumps to the folder as it fills, so you can start culling the protected frames while the rest is still copying.
Eject card	Ejects the card (named beside the box) when the copy is done. Off by default.
Next time, start automatically	The next card inserted copies with these settings straight away, without opening the dialog.

Auto-ingest: insert the card and walk away

The auto-ingest toggle in Settings — The same switch lives in Settings ▸ General.

With it on, a card copies with your saved profile the moment it's read and a toast tracks it. The dialog opens as usual instead if the profile has no destination, the card is empty, or the destination can't be reached. ⌘G brings the dialog back at any time.

Video and audio

Clips and recordings on the card come across with the photos (1.0.138 on) and take the same folder and filename pattern, with the date and time from the file. In Browse they carry a VIDEO or AUDIO badge and the preview plays them.

Nothing is written to video or audio files: no template, no caption, no rename tag. The metadata fields only show what the file already carries.

Codec	Mac	Windows
H.264 + AAC	Plays	Plays
HEVC	Plays	With Microsoft’s HEVC extension installed
ProRes	Plays	Copies, shows as a file-type tile

A clip the app can't decode still copies. It just shows as a file-type tile.

Token reference

The same list the Tokens rail shows, for folder patterns, filenames and FTP remote paths. Click a token in the rail and it goes in at the cursor of the field you clicked last. Photo Mechanic users: these are the equivalents of PM's variables, and PM's own names alias to them.

File & date

From the capture time and the file itself. Photo Mechanic’s names alias: {iptcyear4}, {iptcmonth0}, {iptcday0}, {fldr}, {head}.

{date}

Capture date, YYYY-MM-DD

e.g. 2026-05-28

{datetime}

Capture date + time, YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS

e.g. 20260528_142305

{year4}

4-digit year ({year} too)

e.g. 2026

{year2}

2-digit year

e.g. 26

{month}

2-digit month

e.g. 05

{day}

2-digit day

e.g. 28

{month_name}

Month in full

e.g. September

{month3}

Month, three letters

e.g. Sep

{dow}

Day of the week in full

e.g. Sunday

{dow3}

Day of the week, three letters

e.g. Sun

{capture_date}

Capture date, US order, dashed

e.g. 09-14-2026

{time}

Capture time, HHMMSS

e.g. 142305

{timems}

Capture time with milliseconds

e.g. 142305817

{hour}

2-digit hour, 24-hour

e.g. 14

{minute}

2-digit minute

e.g. 23

{second}

2-digit second

e.g. 05

{ms}

Milliseconds of capture

e.g. 817

{seq}

Sequence number; {seq:4} pads to 0001

e.g. 001

{name}

Original filename, no extension

e.g. IMG_4023

{ext}

Extension, lowercase

e.g. jpg

{rating}

Star rating, 0 if unrated

e.g. 5

{color}

Color label, or none

e.g. red

{folder}

Source folder name

e.g. WSOC-0001

IPTC

Read from the photo’s metadata. At ingest they resolve from the template being applied in that same run, so {headline} in a folder pattern works when the ingest template sets one.

{headline}

Headline ({head} too)

e.g. VB- State vs Coastal

{title}

Title / Object Name

e.g. State Volleyball

{description}

Description / Caption

e.g. State hosts Coastal

{credit}

Credit line

e.g. Jordan Lee-State University

{source}

Source

e.g. State University

{copyright}

{creator}

Creator / Artist

e.g. Jordan Lee

{persons}

People tagged, joined for a filename

e.g. Lucas_Hoyos+Jordan_Lee

{instructions}

Special Instructions

e.g. Editorial use only

{jobid}

Job identifier

e.g. STA-VB-0918

{city}

City

e.g. Riverton

{state}

State / Province

e.g. CA

{country}

Country

e.g. USA

Camera

From the EXIF the camera wrote. Read from the file itself, never a sidecar.

{camera}

Make + model, de-duplicated

e.g. Canon EOS R5

{make}

Manufacturer

e.g. Canon

{model}

Model

e.g. Canon EOS R5

{lens}

Lens model

e.g. RF400mm F2.8 L IS USM

{iso}

ISO

e.g. 3200

{shutter}

Shutter speed, / becomes -

e.g. 1-1000

{aperture}

F-number

e.g. 2.8

{focal}

Focal length

e.g. 400.0 mm

{serial}

Camera body serial

e.g. 023021000537

ExifID

Values you define, looked up from what the photo carries. See the ExifID passage on the Ingest page.

{exif_b}

Column B of the matching ExifID row

e.g. Jordan Lee

{exif_c}

Column C

{exif_d}

Column D

e.g. Jordan Lee-State University

{exif_e}

Column E

e.g. before

{exif_f}

Column F

e.g. during

Troubleshooting

What you see	Why, and what to do
Copy button does nothing	No destination set, or the folder pattern renders empty. Both show in red in the dialog.
Rename field is red	The pattern has no token. Add one, such as {seq}.
"Nothing new" and the dialog closes	Skip existing found each file already at the destination. That card is done.
Duplicates at destination	Skip existing is off. Cancel and tick it, or continue and duplicates get a letter suffix.
RAW and JPEG names don’t match	They were ingested in separate runs. Use Files: Both.
Auto-ingest opened the dialog anyway	The profile has no destination, the card was empty, or the destination couldn’t be reached.

Build an IPTC template with tokens →Fill fields from the camera with ExifID →Set a roster on a folder →Cull out-of-focus photos →Copy, move and rename files →

Getting started and ingest

Ingest from a card

Card to folder, named on the way. One pass copies the frames, renames them, files them into a folder and writes your metadata to them.

Open the dialog Profiles Source Destination Rename Metadata and roster IPTC for this ingest After the copy Video and audio Token reference Troubleshooting

Open the dialog

1
Open it
Press ⌘G, or plug in a card and the dialog opens on it.
2
Work down the dialog
Source, destination, rename pattern, then the metadata rows. Each block is covered below in the same order.
3
Copy
The button at the bottom counts what's about to move, for example Copy 84 photos. It reads Move when Move mode is on.

Close the dialog and the ingest keeps running, with a toast tracking it.

Profiles

The Profile bar at the top of the dialog.

A profile remembers the whole dialog. Set one up per kind of job, say one for volleyball at home and one for football on the road, and pick it from the list.

Control	What it does
Profile list	Loads a saved setup. A dot after the name means you have changed it since it was saved.
Save	Writes your changes back to the selected profile. Greyed out until something changes.
Save As…	Saves the current setup under a new name.
Manage…	Rename or delete profiles.
Unsaved changes	Shows when the dialog has drifted from the profile.

Your last setup is remembered on its own. The next card opens where you left off (the bar says Picked up where you left off), even if you never saved a profile.

Source

Option	What it does
Refresh	Rescans mounted drives and cards.
Choose folder…	Adds any folder to the source list, not just a card.
Subfolders	Pulls photos from subfolders of the source too, not just the top level.
Skip existing	Copies new photos only. Files already at the destination are left alone. Re-insert a card you already ingested and it decides "nothing new" in a moment, ejects the card if that’s ticked, and closes.
Protected first	Copies and captions your in-camera selects ahead of the rest, so they’re in Browse first. Filenames and sequence numbers don’t change, only the copy order.
Focus check	Scores the ingest for blur and soft faces once the copy finishes. BLUR and SOFT flags stream into Browse, protected photos first. It never slows the copy.
Files: Both / JPEG only / RAW only	Which half of a RAW+JPEG pair comes across. The other type stays on the card.

Ingest JPEG only now and RAW later, and the second run gets its own sequence numbers. The pair won't share a name. Use Both if you want them to match.

Skip existing off and some names already exist at the destination? The dialog asks first. Continue and each duplicate gets a letter suffix (imgA, imgB), so nothing is overwritten.

Destination

Option	What it does
Destination + Pick…	The parent folder. Required: the Copy button stays dead until it’s set.
Into folder above	Photos go straight into the destination folder.
Create sub-folder from pattern	Makes a new folder inside the destination, named from the pattern. Default: `{date} Ingest`.

How the folder pattern behaves

•The pattern is worked out per photo. With {date} in it, a card that spans two days lands in two date folders.
•{seq} in a folder pattern is the next unused number at the destination, so each run gets a new folder: 01, 02, 03.
•Skip existing still recognises a card you already ingested by looking in those earlier folders.
•IPTC tokens work here too. {headline} in the folder pattern picks up the headline you type under IPTC for this ingest.
•A pattern that comes out empty for these photos turns red and says so, rather than leaving you with a dead Copy button.

Rename pattern

Tick Rename files on ingest and each file is named from the pattern. Untick it and files keep their original names. The default is {date}_{name}_{seq}.

Option	What it does
Seq digits	Width of `{seq}`, 1 to 6. `{seq:4}` overrides it for one token.
Start at	The first number. Greyed out on Continue per folder, which picks it up from the folder.
Numbering: Start at value	Starts at the number above each time.
Numbering: Continue across ingests	One counter that keeps running from one ingest to the next.
Numbering: Continue per folder	A counter per destination folder. A new folder starts at 1, and adding to a folder carries on where it ended.

A pattern needs at least one token. A fixed name would give each photo the same filename, so the dialog refuses it and marks the field red.

Mode, metadata and roster

Mode

Option	What it does
Copy (keep originals)	The default. The card is untouched. Stay here until your backup is done.
Move (delete from source)	Deletes the files from the card once they’re copied.

XMP

Option	What it does
Apply XMP sidecars	Picks up .xmp files sitting beside the photos. Written to JPEG and TIFF, copied alongside RAW.
Overwrite existing	Only with sidecars on. Clears the file’s own XMP and IPTC before the sidecar is applied, instead of merging.
Apply XMP template	Writes a saved `⌘I` template to each photo as it copies. Pick the template in the list beside it.

Roster, ExifID and MatchID

All three are set on the destination folder after the copy has made it, so the photos arrive ready to tag.

Row	What it does
Roster	Pick a saved roster, or Import… a file and it's added and selected. If the folder already has a roster, the row warns that this one replaces it. See Set a roster on a folder.
ExifID	Automatic uses the template's set, or else the destination folder's. Pick a set to override it. Fills `{exif_b}` to `{exif_f}` as the files copy. See Fill fields from the camera with ExifID.
MatchID	Choose… the teams MatchID should compare against. Set on each folder this ingest writes, so Who is this? works on the first frame. Clear leaves the folders' scope alone.

IPTC for this ingest

•Edits apply to these photos only. The saved template isn't changed.
•An edited field is marked edited, and Revert puts them all back.
•A field marked token holds tokens like {person_name} that fill in per photo. Typing over it replaces that with fixed text.
•What you type here also feeds IPTC tokens in the folder and file patterns.

Building the template itself, and the full list of caption tokens, is in Build an IPTC template with tokens.

After the copy

Option	What it does
Open destination in Browse	Jumps to the folder as it fills, so you can start culling the protected frames while the rest is still copying.
Eject card	Ejects the card (named beside the box) when the copy is done. Off by default.
Next time, start automatically	The next card inserted copies with these settings straight away, without opening the dialog.

Auto-ingest: insert the card and walk away

Video and audio

Nothing is written to video or audio files: no template, no caption, no rename tag. The metadata fields only show what the file already carries.

Codec	Mac	Windows
H.264 + AAC	Plays	Plays
HEVC	Plays	With Microsoft’s HEVC extension installed
ProRes	Plays	Copies, shows as a file-type tile

A clip the app can't decode still copies. It just shows as a file-type tile.

Token reference

File & date

From the capture time and the file itself. Photo Mechanic’s names alias: {iptcyear4}, {iptcmonth0}, {iptcday0}, {fldr}, {head}.

{date}

Capture date, YYYY-MM-DD

e.g. 2026-05-28

{datetime}

Capture date + time, YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS

e.g. 20260528_142305

{year4}

4-digit year ({year} too)

e.g. 2026

{year2}

2-digit year

e.g. 26

{month}

2-digit month

e.g. 05

{day}

2-digit day

e.g. 28

{month_name}

Month in full

e.g. September

{month3}

Month, three letters

e.g. Sep

{dow}

Day of the week in full

e.g. Sunday

{dow3}

Day of the week, three letters

e.g. Sun

{capture_date}

Capture date, US order, dashed

e.g. 09-14-2026

{time}

Capture time, HHMMSS

e.g. 142305

{timems}

Capture time with milliseconds

e.g. 142305817

{hour}

2-digit hour, 24-hour

e.g. 14

{minute}

2-digit minute

e.g. 23

{second}

2-digit second

e.g. 05

{ms}

Milliseconds of capture

e.g. 817

{seq}

Sequence number; {seq:4} pads to 0001

e.g. 001

{name}

Original filename, no extension

e.g. IMG_4023

{ext}

Extension, lowercase

e.g. jpg

{rating}

Star rating, 0 if unrated

e.g. 5

{color}

Color label, or none

e.g. red

{folder}

Source folder name

e.g. WSOC-0001

IPTC

Read from the photo’s metadata. At ingest they resolve from the template being applied in that same run, so {headline} in a folder pattern works when the ingest template sets one.

{headline}

Headline ({head} too)

e.g. VB- State vs Coastal

{title}

Title / Object Name

e.g. State Volleyball

{description}

Description / Caption

e.g. State hosts Coastal

{credit}

Credit line

e.g. Jordan Lee-State University

{source}

Source

e.g. State University

{copyright}

{creator}

Creator / Artist

e.g. Jordan Lee

{persons}

People tagged, joined for a filename

e.g. Lucas_Hoyos+Jordan_Lee

{instructions}

Special Instructions

e.g. Editorial use only

{jobid}

Job identifier

e.g. STA-VB-0918

{city}

City

e.g. Riverton

{state}

State / Province

e.g. CA

{country}

Country

e.g. USA

Camera

From the EXIF the camera wrote. Read from the file itself, never a sidecar.

{camera}

Make + model, de-duplicated

e.g. Canon EOS R5

{make}

Manufacturer

e.g. Canon

{model}

Model

e.g. Canon EOS R5

{lens}

Lens model

e.g. RF400mm F2.8 L IS USM

{iso}

ISO

e.g. 3200

{shutter}

Shutter speed, / becomes -

e.g. 1-1000

{aperture}

F-number

e.g. 2.8

{focal}

Focal length

e.g. 400.0 mm

{serial}

Camera body serial

e.g. 023021000537

ExifID

Values you define, looked up from what the photo carries. See the ExifID passage on the Ingest page.

{exif_b}

Column B of the matching ExifID row

e.g. Jordan Lee

{exif_c}

Column C

{exif_d}

Column D

e.g. Jordan Lee-State University

{exif_e}

Column E

e.g. before

{exif_f}

Column F

e.g. during

Troubleshooting

What you see	Why, and what to do
Copy button does nothing	No destination set, or the folder pattern renders empty. Both show in red in the dialog.
Rename field is red	The pattern has no token. Add one, such as {seq}.
"Nothing new" and the dialog closes	Skip existing found each file already at the destination. That card is done.
Duplicates at destination	Skip existing is off. Cancel and tick it, or continue and duplicates get a letter suffix.
RAW and JPEG names don’t match	They were ingested in separate runs. Use Files: Both.
Auto-ingest opened the dialog anyway	The profile has no destination, the card was empty, or the destination couldn’t be reached.

Build an IPTC template with tokens →Fill fields from the camera with ExifID →Set a roster on a folder →Cull out-of-focus photos →Copy, move and rename files →