Hi,
I know this thread is a few years old, but I'm a working reporter myself and this exact workflow problem — captioning and sending images on location from an iPad — is what drove me to build
CataImage.
It's a native iPad/iPhone/Mac app built specifically for the field workflow that Photo Mechanic handles so well on desktop. Here's what it currently does:
- Full IPTC editor on iPad — all standard fields: caption/abstract, headline, keywords, byline/creator, location, city, state, country, copyright, credit, source, category, instructions, and more
- Batch captioning — select multiple images and apply the same caption, keywords, byline, or any IPTC field in one operation. Exactly the workflow you'd use on location: shoot, import to Files, select the take, batch caption, done
- Works directly from Files — no proprietary library. Plug in your SD card or card reader, open the folder, start captioning. Your files stay where they are and metadata is written directly into them
- Full RAW support — Canon CR3/CR2, Sony ARW, Nikon NEF, Fujifilm RAF, and others. No need to convert to JPEG first to edit metadata
- Complete EXIF reading — all shooting data visible alongside your IPTC fields
- Advanced search — find photos by keyword, caption, creator, location across entire drives, recursively scanning all subfolders in the background
- Star ratings + color labels — 0-5 stars and 7 color tags for quick culling on location
- Optimized performance — handles 50,000+ photos smoothly with GPU-accelerated caching
Now, for the FTP part — I want to be transparent:
FTP transfer is not available yet, but it's actively planned for the near future. We know this is a critical part of the on-location workflow for press and agency photographers (caption → FTP to desk/agency), and it's high on our development roadmap. The goal is to have a complete field workflow within a single app: import from card → cull → caption with IPTC → FTP send — all on iPad.
In the meantime, once you've captioned your images in CataImage, you can use the iOS share sheet or a dedicated FTP client like FTPManager to send them — the IPTC metadata is embedded in the files so it travels with them.
To answer the Lightroom question from the thread: Lightroom on iPad can add some metadata, but it's really designed as a RAW processor with a proprietary catalog. It's not built for the fast caption-and-send workflow that press photographers need. CataImage is purpose-built for exactly that.
The app is on the App Store with a
free 7-day trial. It's still young and actively developed — and feedback from working photographers is exactly what shapes our priorities. If FTP is important to you, your input would genuinely help us refine that feature.
CataImage
