For Photo Mechanic Plus users
The tagging you already did is in the files, not in the catalog.
GalleryID Desktop is the whole workflow: ingest, culling, captioning, delivery, and a Catalog that indexes the same drives into an offline archive. It reads the IPTC and XMP you already wrote and keeps your code replacement sets working, so nothing you built is stranded. Mac and Windows.
Mac and Windows · Your code sets keep working · 14-day free trial, card required
Straight from their announcements, so you can check it yourself. Standard Photo Mechanic is unaffected by all of this. What ended is Plus, and its catalog.
Camera Bits announced that Photo Mechanic Plus is no longer available for purchase. Per that announcement, the catalog feature relied on a third-party technology that is now unsupported. Existing owners keep the software, and Camera Bits says support continues for as long as it stays stable on the operating system you are on today.
Read the Camera Bits announcement →macOS 27 Golden Gate shipped on September 14, 2026, and Camera Bits published in July that beginning with macOS 28, Photo Mechanic 6 will no longer run on Apple silicon Macs. So upgrading today is fine. The break comes with the next major release, roughly a year out, and it covers Photo Mechanic 6 and any Photo Mechanic Plus license bought on or before 11 March 2024, which is most Plus owners. Camera Bits offers upgrade pricing onto their current release.
Read the macOS notice →Photo Mechanic wrote your captions, keywords and names to IPTC and XMP in the files, not only to its database. That is what saves you here.
GalleryID Desktop’s Catalog indexes whole drives into an offline-browsable archive. Search by name, keyword or filename with the drives unplugged, and carry it on the iPhone and Android companion apps, synced over your own wifi only.
The Catalog reads what is already in the files. No export, no migration tool, no re-tagging. Your common code replacement values keep working in GalleryID Desktop as they are, so the shortcuts in your fingers still work.
Removing an item from the Catalog never touches the source file. Exports carry people, keywords and capture date in HD previews or originals. The archive is your drives, organised your way. The Catalog is the search layer over them, and you can walk away from it without losing anything.
See GalleryID Desktop →Ingest was rebuilt so the work happens once, while the file is being written, instead of twice.
Metadata is written to the file as the file is written, so there is no second pass that re-reads and rebuilds the photo. The copy runs across a pool of workers rather than one file at a time. Photos load as they copy, so you can start tagging your protected frames while the rest of the card is still coming across.
Measured at 14.9, 14.9, 15.6 and 16.9 seconds per 1,000 across four runs on two Macs, and 21 to 27 seconds per 1,000 with the metadata written to all of them. Largest: 9,662 files, 101.92 GB, from a SanDisk Extreme PRO CFexpress Type B in a ProGrade PG05.5 reader, copied in 2:24 and fully captioned in 3:23 to 4:20 across three runs, with no file failing to take its metadata. Desktop 1.0.131, figures from the application log. Results vary with hardware, card and file type.
This is the part of the workflow that was never fast, in any tool.
Bind a roster to a folder and one press writes that athlete across the mapped fields at once, in the format each field wants: the short name where you want the short name, the long caption line where you want the long caption line. You enter it once.
There is no template to reapply afterwards to fill in the rest, so there is no pass where you have to be careful about which boxes are ticked to avoid overwriting something you meant to keep.
See the Roster Library →The roster is where you start. MatchID speeds it up: facial recognition built for sports, using the visible face as its primary signal and jersey numbers as an additional signal, in conditions where helmets and motion break ordinary tools. Matches below the confidence threshold you set wait in review before a name is applied. Names are confirmed, never guessed.
How MatchID works →The overlap is real, and it is most of the workflow. These are the rows where the two actually differ.
| Capability | Photo Mechanic PlusWithdrawn from sale Mar 2026 | GalleryID DesktopMac & Windows |
|---|---|---|
| Still soldCamera Bits withdrew Plus on March 2, 2026 | No longer available | $20/mo, two computers |
| Offline catalog of your drivesBrowse and search with the drives unplugged | The reason you bought it | Plus iPhone and Android companions |
| Runs on macOS 28 and laterApple silicon | Not for licenses bought on or before 11 Mar 2024 | Mac and Windows |
| Reads the IPTC and XMP already in your files | It is what wrote most of it | No import, no migration tool |
| Your code replacement sets keep working | Nothing was taken away | |
| Ingest, cull, ratings, colour labelsRAW browses from the embedded preview in both | About 15 sec per 1,000 photos | |
| Athlete names from a rosterWithout typing or memorising a code | Code replacement | Click, shortcode or predictive text |
| One entry fills all the mapped fieldsShort name and long caption line together | Per field, or a template you reapply | One press, nothing to reapply |
| Facial recognition built for sportsHelmets, motion, faces turned away | MatchID, with jersey numbers as a second signal | |
| Rosters built inBring your own in any common format, or build one | Tab-delimited text you make yourself | Roster Library, D1 through D3 and pro |
Nominative use of Camera Bits’ published statements. If any row here is wrong, tell us and we will correct it.
There is no separate catalog product to buy, and no tier that unlocks the archive.
Covers two computers, so the laptop you travel with and the machine at home are the same subscription. Ingest, culling, ratings, tagging, captioning, the Catalog, the Roster Library and delivery are all included.
See pricing in full →A 14-day free trial with a card on file. GalleryID Desktop does not sell a perpetual license, and the reasoning for that is set out plainly on the comparison page rather than buried.
It is no longer available for purchase. Camera Bits announced on March 2, 2026 that Photo Mechanic Plus is no longer sold, and said its catalog feature relied on a third-party technology that is now unsupported. Existing owners keep the software, and Camera Bits says support continues for as long as it stays stable on the operating system they are on. Standard Photo Mechanic is unaffected and still being developed.
For sports photographers, GalleryID Desktop. It is built around the two things that actually decide a deadline: how fast the card comes off, and how fast the names go on. Ingest writes metadata as the files are written rather than in a second pass, measured at about 15 seconds per 1,000 photos and 21 to 27 seconds per 1,000 including the metadata. Then CaptionID puts one athlete name across all the mapped fields in one press, from a roster, with no template to reapply. It also covers culling, ratings, IPTC and XMP, and FTP and ZIP delivery, and its Catalog indexes whole drives into an offline-browsable archive the way the Plus catalog did. Mac and Windows.
Nothing has been announced. In the withdrawal notice Camera Bits said they would keep investigating ways to move catalog databases into other systems, but as of today there is no tool and no date. It is worth remembering that the Plus catalog was a database over your files rather than the files themselves, so the work you care about is not trapped in it.
More than a tab-delimited text file. Load a roster in the common spreadsheet and text formats, build one in the app, or pull one from the built-in Roster Library, which covers NCAA Division I, II and III and the major US pro leagues. Rosters are the part that changes season to season anyway, so the library saves rebuilding them.
The important part was never only in the catalog. Photo Mechanic wrote captions, keywords and names to IPTC and XMP inside the files themselves, so that work lives in your photos. GalleryID Desktop’s Catalog reads what is already there, with no export step and no migration tool. What does not carry over is anything that existed only as catalog-side structure, such as collections that were never written to the files.
The current release does. Camera Bits published on July 29, 2026 that beginning with macOS 28, Photo Mechanic 6 will no longer run on Apple silicon Macs, with macOS 27 the last compatible version. That affects Photo Mechanic 6 and Photo Mechanic Plus licenses purchased on or before 11 March 2024. Camera Bits offers upgrade pricing onto the current release, which runs natively on Apple silicon.
No. Camera Bits states that standard Photo Mechanic is unaffected by the Plus announcement and is still being developed and supported. What ended is Photo Mechanic Plus and its catalog. If the catalog was where your archive lived, that is the piece that needs somewhere to go.
No. GalleryID Desktop can carry the whole workflow, and for most sports photographers that is the point of switching. It also reads and writes the same standard IPTC and XMP, and your code replacement values run here too, so if you would rather cull in Photo Mechanic at first and bring the folder over for identification and delivery, that works. Nothing about starting requires you to give anything up.
About 15 seconds per 1,000 photos, measured across four runs on two Macs at 14.9, 14.9, 15.6 and 16.9 seconds per 1,000. Including metadata written to all of them it is 21 to 27 seconds per 1,000. The largest was 9,662 files and 101.92 GB: copied in 2 minutes 24 seconds, and copied and captioned in 3 minutes 23 seconds to 4 minutes 20 seconds across three runs, with no file failing to take its metadata. Figures are read from the application log, Desktop 1.0.131, 2026-09-14. Metadata is written to the file as the file is written, so there is no second pass, and the copy runs across a pool of workers. Results vary with hardware, card and file type.
Yes. That is what the Catalog is for. It indexes whole drives into an offline-browsable archive you can search by name, keyword or filename without the drives connected, and it syncs to iPhone and Android companion apps over your own wifi only.
No, and that is deliberate. A perpetual license usually means updates for a fixed window, or until the next major version, and after that you are on your own until you buy again. Cameras get released, operating systems change, and we would rather keep shipping to you than sell you a version and move on. The subscription is what lets us support customers for the long haul instead of in one-year increments.