Designed for sports photographers on deadline, Sideline automatically captions your images—delivering fast, accurate, professional results before the final whistle.
Captions matter.
Publications need them. Your clients expect them.
But let's be honest: writing captions kinda sucks.
You know the feeling—stuck typing player names and play descriptions when you’d rather be shooting or editing. Imagine reclaiming that time for what actually matters: your creativity, your clients, and your business.
Sideline fixes that. It identifies players from your Photo Mechanic roster, understands the action, and produces professional captions in newsroom-standard formats like AP and Getty—automatically, instantly, and accurately.
Learn how Sideline's AI helps you caption sports photos faster—saving you time, stress, and late nights.
Point Sideline to a Photo Mechanic Code Replacements file so it understands players and teams. Don't have a Code Replacements file? Sideline's Roster Manager can create one for you.✨
Every caption matches the style your publication expects. Whether you need AP, Getty, or Imagn, Sideline delivers captions that are ready to publish instantly.
See how Sideline's AI captioning can save you time, energy, and frustration every game.
Stop wasting time manually writing captions. Sideline watches your ingest folder and automatically generates professional captions in the background for every image as they're ingested.
Configure once, then let Sideline handle the rest. Captions are written directly to your images' metadata, so they're ready when you import into your image editing software.
When every minute counts, Sideline ensures you never miss a deadline. Images are captioned in seconds, giving you more time to shoot, edit, and upload.
Sideline is 7.3x faster than manual captioning – reducing captioning time from
30 seconds per image
to just
4.1 seconds per image.
You'll save time every game and deliver results faster.
Sideline Captions
"Sideline cut my postgame workflow from two hours to 20 minutes. I used to dread captioning, but now I just have Sideline do it for me. My clients think I hired an assistant."
Michael K.
Freelance Sports Photographer
From player recognition to publish-ready metadata, Sideline includes everything you need to fully automate your captioning workflow.
Sideline Captions offers keyboard shortcuts for every key feature. You can map these commands to your TourBox buttons for an even faster, more intuitive photo editing and captioning experience.
Free to Use
Keep every team you photograph ready to go.
Sideline's Roster Manager organizes every roster for the teams you photograph the most.
Covering live events
Handling multiple sports
Who need to deliver on deadline
Who needs faster captioning
When a friend buys Sideline with your referral code, they save $10 on a lifetime license and you get a $10 refund as a thank you.
Your referral code lives inside the app — copy it, share it, and help other photographers caption faster.
No hidden fees. No subscriptions.
Start for free and upgrade to lifetime access when you're ready.
No credit card required
Provide Your Own API Key for Unlimited Captions
Sideline delivers newsroom-standard captions out of the box, including AP, Getty, and Imagn styles—so every frame is ready for the publications and wire services you work with most.
Sideline connects to your Photo Mechanic Code Replacements file, so it already knows the rosters of the teams you're shooting. As soon as new images land in your watch folder, it matches images against those names, understands the play, and writes professional captions automatically.
Sideline runs quietly in the background, captioning every image as it hits your ingest folder. Since Sideline uses JPG previews ~0.25MB in size (even with RAW files), the average image takes 4.1 seconds to caption.
Yes. Set Sideline to watch your ingest folder and it writes captions straight to every file’s metadata. Sideline writes captions to industry-standard IPTC metadata files, so it can be used with any editing software you already use.
Yes. Sideline's Roster Manager can generate rosters from ESPN. Paid users can also import rosters from MaxPreps & NCAA Stats and export rosters to Photo Mechanic Code Replacement files to share with their team.
Absolutely. Sideline understands eleven popular sports out of the box – with more coming soon – and you can feed it as many rosters as you need—perfect for athletic departments, freelancers, and wire shooters covering multiple teams.
Sideline’s FTP mode watches a remote FTP server. When new images are added, Sideline downloads and captions them automatically, so when you come in from halftime, your images are ready to edit and publish.
Of course. Captions are written directly to the IPTC metadata, so you can review or fine-tune them in Photo Mechanic, Lightroom, or any editor you already use—Sideline simply drafts the heavy lifting for you.
The free trial gives you 500 AI-generated captions – no credit card required. It’s the fastest way to see Sideline in action on a real assignment before upgrading to lifetime access. For a full list of features available in a free trial, see the pricing section.
Nope. A lifetime license to Sideline Captions is a one-time $49 purchase. You will need to supply your own OpenAI API key to generate captions, but it's incredibly cost-effective at ~$1 per 1,000 captioned images.
Share your in-app referral code with colleagues and you both win: they'll save $10 on a lifetime license and you'll get a $10 refund.
Sideline Captions requires macOS 14.0+. While it can work independently, it is designed to be used in conjunction with Photo Mechanic for the best experience.
See why savvy sports photographers are switching to automated captioning. Download Sideline Captions and deliver professional results in minutes.