Good Questions.
Straight Answers.

One subscription includes all five Sideline tools: Sideline Captions, Sideline Rosters, Sideline Live, Sideline Local, and Sideline Wire. Individual plans start at $14.99/month — everything your workflow needs, one price.

No. Paid Sideline plans include unlimited AI captioning — no per-image fees and no credit packs. Caption as many images as you need on every assignment.

Monthly and yearly subscriptions include full access to every Sideline product and unlimited captioning. Yearly billing saves 17% compared to monthly. A lifetime license is a one-time $249 purchase that includes lifetime updates — lifetime license holders provide their own API key for AI captioning. See pricing for details.

Sideline's free trial gives you 500 AI-generated captions plus 14 days of full access to every Sideline product — Captions, Rosters, Live, Local, and Wire. Cancel anytime. For a full feature breakdown, see the pricing page.

Yes. Sideline for Teams gives every team member AI captioning, Roster Manager, and Sideline Live — plus 1TB of pooled storage, white-labeling, centralized user management, and automatic cloud backups. Plans start at $30/user/month with no setup fees.

Both use FTP, but they solve different problems. Sideline Live is for photographers on-site: your camera sends images straight to password-protected client galleries that update in real time — no FTP server for you to run or maintain. Sideline Wire is for remote editors and newsrooms: it watches someone else's FTP server and auto-downloads new files into your local Photo Mechanic or Lightroom folder.

Sideline ships newsroom-ready presets including AP, Getty, Imagn, Icon Sportswire, and ZUMA Press — and you can build and save your own caption styles to match your outlet or house style.

Sideline connects to your Photo Mechanic code replacements text file, so it already knows the rosters of the teams you're shooting. As soon as new images land in your watch folder, it reads jersey numbers, identifies teams by jersey color, distinguishes duplicate numbers, 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 ~2.5 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, so it works with Photo Mechanic, Lightroom, or any editor you already use.

Absolutely. Sideline understands 14 popular sports out of the box, including cricket, tennis, and horse racing, and you can feed it as many rosters as you need — perfect for athletic departments, freelancers, and wire shooters covering multiple teams.

Of course. Captions are written directly to IPTC metadata, so you can review or fine-tune them in Sideline, Photo Mechanic, Lightroom, or any editor you already use — Sideline simply does the heavy lifting for you.

No. Sideline is a complete captioning pipeline on its own. It watches your ingest folder, identifies players from roster data, and writes captions straight into each file's IPTC metadata — stamped and ready to publish. Photo Mechanic is optional, not required. Many photographers have cut PM out of their workflow and let Sideline handle captioning end to end. Don't have a code file yet? Sideline Rosters can build one in seconds.

Yes. Sideline works with both RAW and JPEG files. For RAWs, it uses the embedded JPEG preview for fast AI processing — so you get quick captions without waiting on full RAW conversion.

Yes. If your camera records voice memos or in-camera audio, Sideline can use that audio for added context when identifying players and writing captions — especially helpful when jersey numbers aren't visible.

Caption Review is an in-app panel where you can browse, edit, and re-caption images before they leave your machine. It's the fastest way to spot-check AI output on a big assignment without opening every file in Photo Mechanic.

Yes. Sideline's Roster Manager has more than 1.6M players from over 116,000 teams across 340+ leagues and 16 sports — from high school to the pros. Pick your matchup, customize your code file, and export a Photo Mechanic-ready roster in seconds.

Yes. Shoot high school sports? Import rosters directly from MaxPreps into Sideline Rosters — no manual data entry required.

The Sports Roster Generator is a free web tool that lets you browse upcoming games, pick a matchup, and export Photo Mechanic code replacement files — no Mac app required. It uses the same 1.6M+ athlete database as Sideline Rosters.

Yes. Export your Photo Mechanic code replacement text files from Roster Manager and share them with anyone on your team. You can also import existing CSV or code replacement files if someone else built the roster first.

Create a Sideline Live gallery, enter the credentials into your camera's FTP settings, and share the gallery link with your clients. Images appear in the gallery within seconds of you shooting — automatically updating in real time, with no manual uploads or refreshes.

No. Sideline Live handles everything on our end. Just create a gallery, put the credentials in your camera, and start shooting — no servers to configure, no infrastructure to maintain.

Yes. If your camera supports FTP transfer, it works with Sideline Live — the same workflow you're used to with other live-delivery platforms, but without the setup headaches. See supported cameras.

Yes. Sideline Live includes integrated Stripe payments, watermarked proofing galleries, and branded download watermarks — so clients can browse, favorite, and purchase images directly from your gallery.

A Day Pass is a $9.99 one-time purchase that gives you 48 hours of full Sideline Live access — unlimited galleries and images, 10GB of storage, and every premium Live feature. Perfect for a single tournament, wedding, or event before committing to a subscription. Get a Day Pass.

Individual plans include 10GB of storage. Sideline for Teams includes 1TB of pooled storage. Need more? Add 100GB ($5/mo), 500GB ($15/mo), or 1TB ($30/mo) from your Sideline Live dashboard.

Sideline Local is wireless camera tethering that transfers photos from your camera to your Mac, iPhone, or iPad the moment you shoot — no memory cards, no cables, no dongles. On Mac, photos can flow directly into your Sideline Captions watch folder for automatic AI captioning.

Yes. Your camera and device (Mac, iPhone, or iPad) must be on the same Wi-Fi network. That can be arena Wi-Fi, venue Wi-Fi, your phone's hotspot, or a personal hotspot — whichever works best on gameday. When venue Wi-Fi is overloaded or unreliable, many photographers use their own hotspot instead.

Sideline Local works with Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, and other major brands — any camera with built-in Wi-Fi or a wireless transmitter. Learn more about Sideline Local.

Sideline Wire is for remote editors and newsrooms. Point it at any FTP server and it continuously monitors for new uploads — downloading files into your local folder the moment they're done uploading, with no manual refresh and no missed shots.

Add your FTP credentials once, choose a local download folder (Photo Mechanic ingest, Lightroom auto-import, or any folder you like), and Sideline Wire handles the rest. Every downloaded file gets your IPTC metadata embedded automatically, and Sideline Captions can caption new files as they arrive.

Sideline Captions, Rosters, Local, and Wire require macOS 15.0+. Sideline Local is also available on iOS (iPhone and iPad). Sideline Live runs in any modern web browser. While Sideline can work independently, it is designed to be used with Photo Mechanic for the best experience.

Sideline's desktop apps are macOS only for now. We are actively working on a Windows version — join the waitlist through Help & Support to get notified when it launches.

Sideline sends a small JPEG preview (~0.25MB) to our AI service for captioning — your full-resolution files stay on your machine. Captions are written back to IPTC metadata locally. For full details on data handling, see our Privacy Policy.