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GradPics™ Best Practices Guide 🎓

GradPics™ Best Practices Guide 🎓
🎓 GradPics™ Best Practices Guide 🎓

Hey there, photographers!

Candy here, and Graduation season is right around the corner, and we're here to help you nail it with GradPics™!

Follow this handy guide filled with proven tips, tricks, and best practices to maximize your success and make your ceremony shoots smooth and profitable!

📸 Why GradPics™?

Before diving in, if you're curious about why GradPics™ is your best bet, check out this informative post. Here's the quick rundown:

  • Fast and easy Selfie Check-In™ collects accurate contact info.
  • Real-time photo uploads (or post-ceremony)—your choice!
  • Instant personalized gallery marketing and effective consent for Face Matching™.
  • FREE background removal for portrait stations.
  • No subscription fees or hefty e-commerce charges.

Simply put: It's easy, effective, and boosts your sales!

🤳 Mastering Selfie Check-In™

Selfie Check-In™ is essential to marketing your photos effectively. Follow these critical tips:

  • • Avoid sending pre-event Selfie Check-In links. It can cause day-of confusion and reduces day-of participation, making it harder to get 90%+ participation.
  • • Collect check-ins on the ceremony day at the venue’s holding area. Grads should show you the "confetti screen" to confirm completion.
  • • Print your QR code clearly on a reusable sign. Need signs? We've got you covered here!
  • • Always test your QR codes to confirm they're linked to the correct event.

Why it matters:
  • Collects accurate, updated contact info (personal and family).
  • Far superior to school-provided rosters featuring old contact info, no cell numbers, and edus.
  • Enables personalized gallery marketing, dramatically improving sales.

📢 Effective Communication with Schools

Collaborate proactively with school staff—graduation speakers, event coordinators, and volunteers—to ensure successful Selfie Check-In™ participation:

  • • Clearly explain the benefits—they want smooth photo distribution almost as much as you do!
  • • Offer schools the collected alumni data to assist their future marketing and fundraising efforts.
  • • Ask schools to remind grads and parents about Selfie Check-In™ ahead of the ceremony.

🚀 Be Proactive, Not Passive

Relying on signs alone isn't enough! Take these additional steps:

  • • Hire staff or allocate your photography team to encourage grads to check in.
  • • Consider asking schools or parent associations for volunteer help.
  • • Send engaging videos, graphics, or flyers ahead of time (without the actual Selfie Check-In™ link) to prepare grads and parents about what to expect.
  • • Prepare your customers for day-of Selfie Check-In™ to achieve 90%+ participation.

🌟 Photography Essentials

Great photography drives sales! Here’s how you maximize photo opportunities with GradPics™:

  • • Capture a variety of shots: buddy shots, processionals, pre-stage portraits, handshake moments, post-stage portraits, friends & family shots.
  • • Coordinate with the handshake presenter: request grads and handshakers turn towards your camera for the perfect shot.
  • • Tap-a-Face feature: Use NowCandid’s™ capture app to market family group shots directly.

📡 Always Have a Backup Plan

Internet issues happen. Here's how you keep rolling smoothly:

  • • Provide physical Selfie Check-In™ cards.
  • • Inform grads they can complete Selfie Check-In™ after the ceremony online.
  • • Leverage offline-compatible devices (Capture App and upcoming Selfie Check-In Station™ can both collect info offline).
  • • Work with schools to post Selfie Check-In™ links post-event if needed (available 30+ days).
  • • Enable Group-by-Face™ to simplify navigation within "All Images" galleries.

💲 Pricing Right for Maximum Revenue

Pricing too high can limit your sales. Remember:
  • • Avoid the temptation of setting premium prices for all of your graduations.
  • • Appropriate premium pricing is suitable only for certain graduations (law or medical schools).
  • • Lower prices can significantly boost your overall sales volume.

Real Example:

Now to be fair, this event was not a graduation - but he point still stands!

A recent customer lowered digital download prices from $26 to $20, resulting in:

  • • More orders overall
  • • 20% increase in total revenue
  • • Happier clients and long-term marketing benefits & residual sales

🗓️ Need Extra Help?

We’re here to support your success. Schedule a chat about graduation season and GradPics™ at Calendly.

Happy shooting! 📷✨

Cheers and sparkles,

Candy

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Photographing Homecoming Weekend with NowCandid: A Photographer's Playbook
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August 12, 2025

Photographing Homecoming Weekend with NowCandid: A Photographer's Playbook

8
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High school homecoming weekend is packed with photo-worthy moments

From the parade and pep rally to the big game, homecoming court, and the dance. For photographers, it’s a whirlwind. But with NowCandid™, even a small team can cover it all efficiently and profitably.

Below is a quick look at each event, the opportunities it presents, and the NowCandid tools that help you make the most of them.

🎉 Homecoming Parade – Kicking Off the Celebration

  • • Selfie Check-In™: Let parade participants register with a quick selfie before kickoff. Face Matching will tag them automatically later.
  • • Roam & Shoot: Focus on faces & emotional moments, not journalistic shots. The system will do the rest!
  • • PartyPics™: Upload images in real-time for attendees, parents and students to view instantly.

    💡 Every identified face is a potential sale. Automation ensures you don’t miss anyone.

📣 Pep Rally – Spirit & Smiles

  • • Selfie Check-In™: Continue building your attendee database for the weekend.
  • • LiveLoop™: Display photos on the big screen in real-time to build excitement.

    💡 More personalized photos = more likely purchases.

🏈 Football Game – Under the Lights

  • • Face Matching™: Match images to fans, players, and band members automatically.
  • • JerseyJotter™: You can even let fans filter photos by jersey number for easy finds.
  • • Live-Upload: Deliver shots before halftime!
  • • LiveLoop™: Show photos on the big screen during breaks for instant crowd buzz.

    💡 Thousands of game photos become searchable and personal, boosting sales.

👑 Homecoming Court – Crowning Moments

  • • Prepare: Add nominees to Face Matching™ ahead of time with Selfie Check-In™!
  • • Background Removal: Instantly turn sideline shots into elegant portraits.
  • • Live-Upload: Provide those crowning shots well before the night’s over.

    💡Court images have built-in demand, your social pics will encourage bigger package sales!

💃 The Dance – A Night to Remember

  • • Selfie Check-In™ at the Door: The best time to get Check-Ins!

    • Even if someone checks-in again, that's no problem! Get everyone to do it as they funnel into the dance.
  • • Digital Backgrounds: Offer multiple themed or elegant options for portraits, our real-time background removal makes it easy.
  • • Photo Booth + LiveLoop™: Between NowCandid's Photo Booth Mode & LiveLoop™, you have multiple upsell options that create more photos and more positive energy!

    💡 Multiple background choices can lead to one image being purchased multiple times!

🚀 Why It Works

NowCandid™ turns homecoming into a personalized, real-time, high-volume photography experience—without extra staff.

  • • Efficiency: Automation handles matching, sorting, and delivery.
  • • Delight: Participants see their photos fast and without searching.
  • • Profitability: More sellable images, quicker turnaround, and premium offerings = better margins.

A typical homecoming weekend is jam-packed with memories in the making.

For a photographer, it used to mean juggling notebooks of names, printing hundreds of proofs, or spending days in post-event labor. Now, with tools from NowCandid™, a single photographer (even operating solo) can confidently cover the parade, pep rally, game, court, and dance – and do it in a way that’s both fun for students and profitable for the business.

By using features such as Selfie Check-In™ and Face Matching™ to ensure everyone’s identified, QuicPics™ and LiveLoop™ to deliver excitement in real time, and Photo Booth and AI-powered backgrounds to offer creative products, you transform the event photography workflow from chaotic and labor-intensive to smooth, high-tech, and engaging.

In short, NowCandid’s software and workflows allow you to capture the full spirit of homecoming

Every candid laugh, every triumphant cheer, every dance floor twirl – and get those images into the hands of the people who will cherish them, almost as fast as the memories are made.

This means happier clients, more sales, and a homecoming weekend where the photographer can enjoy the process as much as everyone else enjoys the photos.

Here’s to using technology to work smarter, wow your customers, and make homecoming (and many more events to come) a win-win for everyone involved!
Weekly Recap: Tap-A-Face from the Dashboard & Smarter Roster Contacts 👤✨
Feature Updates
August 8, 2025

Weekly Recap: Tap-A-Face from the Dashboard & Smarter Roster Contacts 👤✨

3
 minutes read
Hey there, photo friends!

This week’s updates are small but mighty—because behind the scenes we’re cooking up some bigger projects that we can’t wait to share with you soon.

For now, here’s what’s fresh in your NowCandid™ Dashboard:

👆 Tap-A-Face… from the Web Dashboard!

You’ve always loved Tap-A-Face in the field—now you can do it right from your Dashboard.

From any image’s Image Details Page, head to the Participants tab and click the new Add via Tap-A-Face button. From there:

  1. Click a spot on the image where a face is
  2. Enter the contact info for the person

This will instantly create a new Participant in your Event, kick off Face Matching™, and start marketing their gallery right away. 📸💌

Manage Images -> Details, Logs, and More-> Participants -> Add via Tap-A-Face

📇 Roster Contacts, Upgraded

Contacts you add through Rosters are now much easier to work with! They’ll behave just like your regular Contacts & Participants—meaning:

  • They’re fully editable
  • They can be assigned multiple images without the previous first-image requirement

No more clunky workarounds—just smoother, faster contact management. 🙌

This change will also improve adding Contacts via the "Create Participant" button, as well as Contacts who add themselves to the Event via a Positive ID Event's Simple Check-In.

These kinds of Contacts will just show a silhouette for now, which we may adjust down the line!

That’s it for this week!

Stay tuned—because some very cool things are coming your way soon. 👀✨

Keep being amazing,

Candy 🍬

Weekly Recap: PhotoCoach Support, Acrylic Puzzles & More! 🧠🧩
Feature Updates
August 1, 2025

Weekly Recap: PhotoCoach Support, Acrylic Puzzles & More! 🧠🧩

4
 minutes read
Hey there, photo friends!

Candy here with some sweet new updates from your NowCandid™ Dashboard.

We've got a powerful new coaching tool, a fun new product to sell, and a bunch of workflow-boosting fixes to round it out.

Let’s dive in! ✨

🆕 New Feature: PhotoCoach

Introducing PhotoCoach—your new secret weapon for improving the quality of your photographers’ photos over time! 🧠📷

With PhotoCoach, you can:

  • • Review images from your Events and flag them with issues like "Acceptable," “Duplicate,” “Exposure Issue,” “Cropping Issue” and more (and make your own categories too!)
  • • Track photographer photo quality over time
  • • Send automatic feedback reports to your photographers with a breakdown of image counts & issue counts

It’s perfect for helping your team take more sellable images—leading to happier clients and stronger sales!

Find it now under Tools & More on your Dashboard and start coaching like a pro. 💪

Note: PhotoCoach is not new for CORE™ users (CORE™ is our sister-software at Candid Color Systems™), but it's new to NowCandid™! And it's had some feature improvements recently so it is now web-based! Woo!

It takes a little getting used to, but once you are, it's super easy and super fun!

🧩 NEW: 8×10 Acrylic-Backed Puzzle

Puzzle fans, rejoice! 🎉 You can now sell a 56-piece acrylic-backed 8×10 puzzle, complete with cute live-rendered previews on the retail site.

Why customers will love it:

  • Unique gift or keepsake
  • Durable acrylic & display-worthy

Even the little detahced pieces in the top right live-render, yay! - Theme: Liquorice

🔗 URL Filtering Just Got Smarter

Now when shoppers apply filters on the retail site, those filters update the URL automatically—making filtered views shareable with friends & family!

Not much more to say about this one, just a cool touch! :)

🛠️ Misc Tweaks & Fixes

A roundup of small but mighty changes:

  • 📥 Dynamic Personal Gallery Downloads can now be purchased by shoppers via Favorites!
    • A great addition for action sports—gives customers a “buy all” option that scales with the number of images selected, even when shopping from an All Gallery.
  • 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Group-by-Face filter popup now shows only unique faces
    • Applies to new Events only—re-run Group-by-Face on past Events if needed!
  • 🗂 BGR Folders are editable again via the “Edit Folder” option
  • 🖼 Retail site now scrolls past the cover photo if a filter is selected from the initial popup
    • A smoother experience when arriving to an All Images gallery
  • 🧍‍♀️ Selfie Check-In button transforms post-Face Matching
    • It now becomes a second Retail Site button after expiration
  • 🧾 Invoice History tool now displays all past invoices, not just recent ones

That’s everything for this week! 💫

Whether you're giving photo feedback, selling puzzles, or just tidying up your workflow—we’ve got your back.

More soon!
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.

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
How to customize formatting for each rich text

What’s a Rich Text element?

The rich text element allows you to create and format headings, paragraphs, blockquotes, images, and video all in one place instead of having to add and format them individually. Just double-click and easily create content.

A rich text element can be used with static or dynamic content. For static content, just drop it into any page and begin editing. For dynamic content, add a rich text field to any collection and then connect a rich text element to that field in the settings panel. Voila!

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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