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Crowning Moments: Turning Prom Night into Profit with NowCandid

Crowning Moments: Turning Prom Night into Profit with NowCandid
Prom night is an iconic milestone in a high schooler’s life, brimming with fashion, friendships, and unforgettable memories.

While it's true that smartphones have made "everyone a photographer", professional prom photography remains a lucrative venture. Why? The answer lies in the quality that professional photos can offer, capturing prom night with a finesse that smartphones simply can't match.

The Profitability of Prom Photography

Prom photography can be highly profitable, with a target metric of $1.50 per image being a realistic benchmark for success. However, with the right approach, this figure can soar, as evidenced by a NowCandid's users Oklahoma City Prom, which achieved $2 per image across 3000 pictures taken, totaling $6000 in sales.

The key to serious profitability lies in having quantity, quality, and variety! An effective photographer using NowCandid has the ability to quickly deliver a professional, high-quality image gallery that will capture the attention of their subjects.

Why Proms are Still Profitable

  1. Social Media Influence: Today’s high schoolers live in a social media-centric world where the quality of a photo can greatly increase the quality of a post. Professional, well-lit, and expertly framed photos are in demand for their social media feeds, making them willing to purchase digital copies for their Instagram or Facebook profiles.
  2. Parental Investment: Parents are equally important customers in the prom photography market. They cherish these milestones and are often more than willing to purchase photos that capture their child’s special night. Using Selfie Check-In allows you to collect both the subject and the parents' contact info, marketing the subject's photos to both parties!
  3. Speedy Delivery: With the help of NowCandid, images can be available for purchase instantly. Selling images right away can benefit your overall sales thanks to impulse purchases people make when they are at their most excited about the Event.
  4. Unique Print Products: Unique print products alongside desirable images is always a combination that will generate extra sales! A variety of products be purchased, in addition to the usual prints and downloads. You can even upload an Event-specific custom banner to your Events to further make your product unique compared to the images subjects can take with their own phones - turning every photo into a memento!

Keys to Successful Prom Photography

  • Quality: While taking a substantial number of photos is important, ensuring the quality of your images increases their salability. Ensure each photo is well-lit and tightly cropped!
  • 2 Pics Per Minute: Aim for 2 pictures every minute, targeting 120+ per hour. These need to be unique images too - don't count duplicates! Utilize features like NowCandid’s LiveLoop to encourage guests to seek out photographers to get on the big screen.
  • Posing: Encourage a variety of poses to maximize the number of sellable images for any group you approach. After photographing a group of four, break the group into couples, ladies only, guys only, etc.
  • Photo Stations: Establish a dedicated photo area with an attractive backdrop suitable for individuals, couples, and groups, enhancing the variety and appeal of a subject's image gallery. Props are optional, but can be a fun addition. Also, a photo station is also a good place to station your less-social photographers, as guests will come to them!
  • Selfie Check-In Mastery: Achieving high participation in Selfie Check-In not only streamlines image delivery but also ensures a direct marketing channel to both students and their parents.
  • Strategic Staffing: Align the number of photographers with the expected guest count, aiming for one photographer per 100-150 guests to ensure comprehensive coverage of the event.
  • Strategic Compensation: Many successful social photographers pay their photographers based on how many unique (no duplicates) and sellable (good quality) images they take at a party. Consider paying $0.20 per sellable image with a minimum pay of $18 an hour, guaranteeing them decent pay but giving them room to take more images to make you both more money. (Example: 120 images an hour would be $24 an hour)

NowCandid: Your Partner in Capturing the Magic of Prom Night

NowCandid software is designed to streamline the photography process, from efficient image capture and upload to simplifying sales through intuitive galleries and easy online ordering.

With NowCandid, photographers can focus on what they do best—taking stunning photos—while the platform handles the logistics, making each prom a potential goldmine of photographic opportunities.

Success Stories to Inspire

Photographers like Tosha LaForest and Eric Miller have harnessed the power of NowCandid to amplify their school dance and event photography sales. Their experiences underscore the potential of well-executed prom and dance photography to significantly boost revenue and client satisfaction.

Prom photography, powered by NowCandid, offers a great option for photographers to expand their portfolios and profit margins. By focusing on quality, variety, and quantity, photographers can tap into the lucrative prom market, turning each dance into a profitable venture (and fun) venture.

Learn more, and join the ranks of successful prom photographers with NowCandid.

Visit our success stories to learn more and get inspired to capture the vibrant energy and timeless elegance of prom night.

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Weekly Recap: Smarter Upload Errors, Better Luxe Renders & Invoice Fixes 🍬✨
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March 27, 2026

Weekly Recap: Smarter Upload Errors, Better Luxe Renders & Invoice Fixes 🍬✨

2
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Hey photo friends! 👋

This week’s updates are all about clearer feedback, smoother retail rendering, and a few helpful fixes across the Dashboard, Check-In, and Capture App.

🖼️ Retail: Better Luxe 3D Renders

A few important improvements landed for Luxe products on retail:

Luxe Prints 3D renders now work correctly for horizontal images

💡 Luxe render lighting improved so products look more natural and less over-bright

📱 Mobile cropping on 3D renders is much more stable and performant

  • Fixed an issue where gesture-based cropping could crash on mobile devices

If you’re selling Luxe products, this should make the preview experience feel more polished.

📤 Dashboard: Clearer Image Upload Errors

The Image Uploader now does a better job explaining what actually went wrong:

🚫 Oversized files now show the real reason

  • Instead of a vague “Error uploading,” files over the limit will correctly say the image is too large

📏 File size is now included in the error message

  • Example: File size is over 20 MB (25.3 MB)

🌐 Network issues now say “Network Error”

  • Much clearer than a generic upload failure

🔁 Automatic retry for network errors

  • The uploader will now retry up to 5 times before giving up

A small change, but a much better experience when uploads hit a snag.

🧾 Dashboard Fixes & Improvements

📄 Profile invoices fixed

  • Invoices from January onward should now load correctly
  • Invoices are also now easier to find through Sidebar Find and Candy navigation

👥 PhotoRosters wording updated

  • “Members” is now “Contacts” for better consistency across NowCandid

📊 Participant image counts fixed on the Event Participant List for certain Positive ID edge cases

🎨 Fixed an overlay importer edge case that could make Events appear twice in the list

🤳 Check-In Improvements

📋 Fixed the list of existing check-ins going off-screen for accounts with a lot of check-ins

✍️ Some check-in copy was updated for clarity

📱 Capture App 5.4.1 (iOS OTA)

🔒 Fixed PhotoBooth and Selfie Check-In Station close buttons not working on devices without a passcode set up

That’s the update for this week! Better Luxe previews, clearer upload feedback, and a handful of fixes to keep things running smoothly.

Keep creating magic,

Candy 🍬

Weekly Recap: Jersey Jotter Page, Smarter AI Edits & Android Improvements 🍬📸
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March 20, 2026

Weekly Recap: Jersey Jotter Page, Smarter AI Edits & Android Improvements 🍬📸

4
 minutes read
Hey photo friends! 👋

This week brings a mix of sports-focused tools, AI editing upgrades, and performance improvements across the Dashboard and Capture App.

Let’s get into it.

🏈 New: Dedicated Jersey Jotter Page (Sports Events)

Jersey Jotter just got a big usability upgrade with its own dedicated page:

🔢 Search images by jersey number or color (just like retail search)

🎛️ Easily enable/disable number & color recognition

📊 View totals for detected numbers and colors

📍 Automatically appears for Sports events only

If you’re working high-volume sports, this should make organizing and finding images much faster.

Same filters your customers have come to expect, right in the Dashboard!

🎨 Candy Image Studio: Better Results + New Styles

Candy Image Studio continues to level up:

Improved edit quality across multiple nodes

🛡️ Smarter safety system for safer outputs

🖼️ Example thumbnails added to many nodes (so you know what to expect)

🆕 New AI Styles:

🧸 Chibi

🧍 3D Cartoon

🦸 Action Figure

Not sure when this one specifically would be helpful, but it's cool isn't it!

⚡ Dashboard Improvements

🚀 Faster overall performance across the Dashboard

🎬 Smoother transitions (faster, and some now morph instead of just fading)

🧹 Roster uploads now auto-clean whitespace
Prevents frustrating validation errors from accidental empty spaces in spreadsheets

🔎 Fixed “Find a Participant” link in Sidebar Find

🧪 Fixed false positives in Image Tester filename validation

🏷️ Data & Upload Improvements

📄 CORE spreadsheets now supported in roster and PhotoRoster uploads (for those working across CORE workflows)

🛠️ Marketing & Check-In Fixes

📩 Fixed duplicate text message edge cases

🤳 Fixed “Upload From Camera Roll” issue on Check-In

🤖 Capture App 5.4 (Android Improvements)

This update focuses on improving the Android experience:

📱 Immersive mode UI

  • Reduces accidental navigation and keeps the app more stable on devices like Samsung

🎨 Dark-themed native dialogs for alerts and messages

🔒 Orientation locked to vertical (matching iOS behavior)

App size reduced ~20% (faster downloads, less storage)

🔌 Fixed devices showing as generic “USB Camera Device” instead of model name

🔄 Fixed Over-The-Air updates not working on some devices

That’s the week!

A strong mix of sports workflow improvements, better AI editing tools, and faster, cleaner performance across the board.

See you next week,

Candy 🍬

Weekly Recap: Android Capture App Launch, PhotoTag Downloads & Upload Improvements 📸🍬
Feature Updates
March 13, 2026

Weekly Recap: Android Capture App Launch, PhotoTag Downloads & Upload Improvements 📸🍬

4
 minutes read
Hey photo friends! 👋

This week’s updates include something many of you have been waiting for: the first public release of the Capture App on Android. Alongside that launch, we’ve also improved PhotoRoster workflows, tightened up retail safeguards, and rolled out several capture app fixes across platforms.

Let’s take a look.

🤖 Capture App Now Available on Android (Beta)

The first Android version of the Capture App (v5.0.1) is now available on Google Play.

IMPORTANT: This is very new! So it's in BETA at the moment. Meaning, if you want to use Android, we encourage you to try a test Event at your home or office and make sure your flow works with your particular equipment! If you run into any issues, let us know right away!

This release brings feature parity with the iOS app (with the exception of Photo Booth Mode and AirPrint, which currently are not planned for Android):

📷 Supports all of our capture workflows

⚡ Same improved upload system introduced in iOS v5

🔁 Camera-triggered auto-launch support

🎨 Android themed icon support

📱 Edge-to-edge Android UI support

If you’ve been wanting to run Capture on Android devices, the foundation is now here!

Screenshots from our new Android Capture & Upload App!

📱 Capture App Improvements

iOS – Version 5.0.1 (OTA)

A few fixes and small usability improvements landed this week:

🔎 Participant not found message when scanning cards

  • Instead of defaulting to the first participant, the app now clearly shows when a scan doesn’t match anyone.

📊 Image gallery stats now update correctly during uploads.

📂 TKO popup now dismisses properly when setting a folder as TKO.

🖥 Windows Capture App – Version 4.21

New image upload API improves upload speed and reduces device resource usage

📡 Better behavior when signing into events with no connectivity

📂 Event selector now shows only active events when offline, matching iOS behavior

🏷️ Workflow Improvements

📥 Download PhotoTags directly from the PhotoTags page

  • This makes it simple to reuse or share tags between events.

📂 PhotoRoster uploads increased

  • Individual image uploads now support up to 5,000 images at once (previously 1,000).

🎨 Candy Image Studio Reliability Fix

Candy Image Studio uploads now behave more consistently.

Edited images will now reliably appear in all the same places as the original image, including:

  • All galleries
  • QuicPics texts
  • Personal galleries

Previously, images only appeared if they happened to match faces or were manually assigned.

🛍️ Retail Improvements

A couple improvements help prevent confusing edge cases for customers:

👥 Group products now properly enforce group images

  • If someone tries selecting a non-group image for a group product, they’ll now see a clear error message.

🌍 New international shipping notice

  • For non-US shipping addresses, customers now see a helpful reminder that customs or import fees may be charged by their country in addition to international shipping fees.

🖥️ Dashboard Improvements

Some smaller UI improvements landed this week:

✨ Toggle switches now animate smoothly instead of appearing choppy.

That’s the week!

The Android Capture App launch is a big step toward expanding device flexibility, and the PhotoTag downloads and PhotoRoster improvements should make event setup a little easier as well.

See you next week,

Candy 🍬

Let’s get in touch

If you’re a photographer looking to add NowCandid services to your wheelhouse – set up a call by clicking the button below.

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How to customize formatting for each rich text

How to customize formatting for each rich text

How to customize formatting for each rich text

How to customize formatting for each rich text
How to customize formatting for each rich text

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Headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, figures, images, and figure captions can all be styled after a class is added to the rich text element using the "When inside of" nested selector system.

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