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Holiday Gear Up

Holiday Gear Up
Are you ready for the Holiday Season?

Maybe not since we have roughly 10 weeks to go. For most photographers, the winter months can bring a noticeable slowdown, but this also presents the perfect opportunity to seize seasonal event opportunities like Santa Portraits and holiday parties.

These festive events are in high demand, and with the right tools, you can make the most out of them!

We want to share a success story from a Santa Portrait Event that took place in the last few years, along with how NowCandid’s Workflows can help you maximize your success this holiday season.

Santa Portrait Station Success

Rachel S., a photography business owner from South Florida, a few years ago landed a Santa Portrait event at a Zoo and turned it into a HUGE win. With Candid's Scanner ID Workflow, Rachel was able to use the same techniques of a typical sports or school picture day and apply them to the Holiday Zoo Lights Santa Event.

To manage the event, Rachel used the Scanner ID Workflow, and generated blank QR cards to pass out to people while they waited in line.

The QR codes were scanned by the guests who then paired their contact info with their QR code! Once they got to the front of the line, Rachel's photographers would scan the next guest's QR with their tethered device, and then take their photos!

The device tethered to the camera would then upload the photos right after they were taken!

With the contact info and pictures both in the system, gallery links were then automatically texted directly to the subjects, right away.

Overall, this event garnered over $42,000 in it's first year!!! Not bad for a couple weeks of work!

NowCandid Workflows: Make Your Holiday Events a Breeze

One of the key elements to success in high-volume holiday events is efficiency—and that’s where NowCandid’s Workflows come into play.

These workflows streamline the process of capturing, organizing, and delivering photos, allowing you to focus more on your artistry and client experience.

Here are two workflows you’ll want to use during your Santa sessions and holiday parties:

  1. Scanner ID: The Workflow Rachel used! It's great for efficiently collecting guest contact info while they are in line, letting you move the line along more quickly OR have more time available for additional photos. Contact info is essential for instant image delivery and post-shoot marketing.
  2. Type & Take: This works similarly to the Scanner ID Workflow, except you type the subject's contact info into your tethered device before photographing them. It is not as time efficient at Scanner ID, but it doesn't require you to print out many blank cards before the event!

Seasonal Retail Theme to Add to the Experience

The holiday fun doesn't stop at the event—it continues when your customers view and purchase their images! With our Candy Cane retail theme, your clients are immersed in the festive spirit as soon as they visit their personal image gallery.

Our themes include delightful touches like falling snowflakes, which gently drift across the screen. These animations help enhance the shopping experience and keep customers wrapped up in the magic of the season.

Theme: Candy Cane - Watermarking: Default

Use Overlay Art to Add a Special Touch

If you're looking to elevate the experience further, NowCandid offers Overlay Art, allowing you to add optional customized overlays to your clients' images.

These titles add a festive, personal touch to the photos, making them feel extra special, whether it's a corporate holiday party, a Santa session, or a family Christmas gathering.

Imagine sending clients their Santa Portraits, complete with a “Merry Christmas 2024” overlay or a custom-designed title that reflects the spirit of the season. It’s little touches like these that make clients feel valued and excited about your services—leading to more referrals and repeat business.

Why You Shouldn't Sleep on Holiday Opportunities

The holiday season offers some of the most lucrative photography opportunities of the year, especially when it comes to events like Santa Portrait sessions, corporate holiday parties or large family and friends gatherings.

With many photographers considering this time a "slow season," there's an opportunity to stand out from the crowd by offering fun, engaging photo experiences that families, organizations, and individuals will love.

Adding these events to your services can also build lasting relationships with your clients—because who doesn’t want to make holiday memories they’ll treasure forever?

Don't Miss Out: Prep for the Holidays Now

The key to success is preparation. Start planning your Santa sessions, promote your holiday event photography, and make sure you're using NowCandid’s powerful tools to handle your Events with ease.

And remember: festive cheer isn’t just for clients. By embracing the holiday season and seizing these photography opportunities, you can fill your calendar and finish the year strong.

Cheers, and may there be many holiday events in your future!

Candy 🍬

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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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