Tag race photos in a folder on your computer, no gallery host needed

Not every race photographer sells through SmugMug or Zenfolio. Some deliver through their own website, some through a client's, some straight from Lightroom. Until now, Bibbit only worked once photos were sitting on a gallery host. Now a folder on your computer is just another kind of gallery.

How it works

Create the event as you always would, then on its Galleries tab choose Add Gallery and Folder on this computer. Pick the race's folder, check the name, and select Add and scan.

That's it. The folder opens in the same scan page your SmugMug and Zenfolio galleries use and starts straight away. The Folder Photos tab shows every photo in the folder, the ones not scanned yet faded, with a progress bar as they go through. The folder sits in the event's galleries next to any others, with the same progress (Scanning 42%, then Scanned), and Review works exactly as it does for a gallery: each photo zoomed in, with the detected bibs boxed, ready to confirm or fix.

Your photos stay on your computer

Bibbit never uploads your originals. For each photo your browser sends a small copy, 1,280 pixels across, to find the bibs and faces, then just the bib areas, cut from your full-size original, so the numbers are read at full resolution. Neither is kept. What Bibbit saves is what it read: each photo's file name, its bibs and runner names, and, with face grouping on, the face measurements it needs to group runners.

When you want the photos back with keywords in them, your browser writes the keywords into copies of your photos and downloads them. Your originals aren't changed.

Names and faces, just like a gallery

The folder uses the event's roster. Upload a roster CSV on the event's Event Roster tab before you add the folder, and every bib that matches gets the runner's name as a keyword too.

If the event has face grouping on, the folder gets it as well. Bibbit groups the same runner's photos by face, so a photo where the bib is folded, covered or out of frame can still be tagged with that runner, and you confirm the pairings in Review just as for a gallery. (More on that in finding race photos when your bib is hidden.)

Keep working while it scans

A big race takes a while. You don't have to watch it: open other events, check your dashboard, start the next race. The scan keeps going anywhere in Bibbit, with a small indicator that links back to the folder.

The one rule is to keep the browser tab open. If you close it, Bibbit asks first, anything already scanned stays saved, and you get an email saying the upload stopped, with a link back. If your connection drops for a while, the upload waits and carries on by itself.

Come back to it later

In Chrome and Edge, Bibbit remembers the folder. Come back tomorrow and the event page says Reconnect folder. One click, your browser asks to allow it, and the photos are there again: thumbnails, Review, and a scan that stopped part way carries on with only the photos it hasn't done. Nothing is scanned or charged twice.

In Safari and Firefox, which don't let a website remember a folder, the event page says Choose the folder instead, and you pick it again. The result is the same.

What you get

From the gallery's Export & Sync tab:

• Photos with keywords. A zip of copies of your photos with the bib numbers and runner names written into their IPTC keywords, plus an .xmp file beside each. Import them into Lightroom, or upload them to your website as they are. As with a gallery sync, a photo gets keywords once it's reviewed; Mark all reviewed does the lot at once.
• Results as CSV or JSON. Each file's name, bibs and names, for your own tools.

Both stay available on the event for as long as it exists.

What it costs

The same as a gallery: one scan per photo, two with face grouping on. The total shows before you start, and you only pay for photos once, however many times you reconnect or download.

Letting runners find their photos

Keywords only help runners if they can search them. Wherever the photos end up, turn on that site's keyword or photo search so a bib number finds the photo. If your site has no search at all, Bibbit's search by selfie page gives runners a way in.

Try it

Folder galleries work for any event you already have in Bibbit. Open one, select Add Gallery, and choose Folder on this computer. The step-by-step guide is in How it works.