Hey photo friends! 👋

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This week’s updates are all about clearer customer actions, smoother retail performance, and new tools that speed up upload workflows. Plus, a strong round of Capture App polish (iOS & Android OTA) and some important Dashboard + Marketing fixes.

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Let’s jump in. ✨

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🛍️ Retail: Fewer Mis-clicks, Better Previews, Faster Feel

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✅ Express Checkout confirmation (all express checkouts)

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All express checkout flows now show a confirmation popup that clearly displays the shipping address selected, with options to place the order or go back. It also includes an invalid address popup.

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Previously, people would sometimes purchase without double checking their express-checkout-method's default shipping address. So, this change is designed to reduce address mistakes and improve customer experience!

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🧠 Better UI + performance improvements

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• Improved local rendering (performance, memory usage, and task handling) — originally aimed to improve the retail experience on low-end devices, but it should make most devices feel faster!

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• Native “leave page” confirmation on supported browsers/devices (desktop + Samsung back button) when navigating away from an event page (refresh/back).

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🖼️ Clearer package download expectations + better pickers

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• Personal Gallery Downloads on store sheet and package editor now show “+X Images” in the configurator when there are more than 4 images—so customers don’t think they only get what’s previewed.

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• Personal Gallery Download products inside packages can now be clicked to preview contents.

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• Desktop product/package image pickers are now two columns (like mobile), allowing larger image preview during selection.

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• Image Filters landing popup now includes “Browse all photos without a filter” so customers who think they must pick a filter know they can also just browse!

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🧩 Retail fixes worth noting

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• Fixed a slashed discount amount showing on week 3 when there is no higher amount.
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• Fixed a GalleryGuard edge case that could close the retail site on some Android devices that support mobile context menus when long-pressing.
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• Fixed a race condition where a Group-by-Face gallery loaded from URL params could show default results instead of the filtered view.
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• Fixed an edge case where manually assigned images marked as group could behave like non-group images on retail.

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📱 Capture App OTA: 5.6.1 & 5.6.2 (iOS & Android)

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🌐 NEW: Network Speed Test (5.6.1)

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A new Network Speed Test button is available in Resources. Tap Run Test to check download speed, upload speed, and latency to NowCandid servers (so results may differ from Google/Ookla). It’s a quick test (downloads 5 MB, uploads 2 MB) and is useful for diagnosing weak or congested service during events.

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Mbps is a standard measurement for connection speeds, and 1 megabit per second (Mbps) is 0.125 Megabytes per second (MB/s). So 8 Mbps is 1 Megabyte per second, max. For example, with images that are 10 Megabytes in size, a speed of 8 Mbps would take a minimum of 10 seconds to upload. When speeds are very slow, image uploads may be impossible due to uploads timing out and restarting. In these cases, open the app when you have a stronger connection and all your images will start going up!

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🎪 Photo Booth + Selfie Check-In Station UI upgrades (5.6.2)

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• Photo Booth landing page updated to be more user-friendly (always-visible scrollbar, updated text, sticky go back/continue buttons, red/green emphasis, and a popup explaining why Continue is greyed out).
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• Selfie Check-In Station landing page updated with red/green Go Back / Begin buttons.
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• New dropdown icon beside Group Photo toggle (when an event has PhotoTags) to better display there are additional options to assign PhotoTags.
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• Fixed edge case cancel/continue behavior on Selfie Check-In Station when no contact info was entered.

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🧩 NEW: Lightroom Classic Plugin (Official)

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We’ve launched an official Lightroom Classic plugin to upload images to NowCandid events directly from Lightroom Classic.

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Key notes:

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• Lightroom Classic only
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• Same image rules apply (color profile, DPI, etc.)
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• Uses Capture App login
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• Only events within 60 days of event start date show in the selector
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• Image Details → Logs will show “Uploaded from NowCandid Lightroom Plugin”
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• Docs include guide/download/installation: https://app.nowcandid.com/docs/tools-more/lightroom

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🖥️ Dashboard: Upload & Roster Clarity + Small UX Wins

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• Event roster upload and PhotoRoster upload now warn about every unrecognized column, making it easier to spot misspellings (especially for optional columns).
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• Participant list page download now puts additional contacts into columns instead of rows.
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• Participant list download now puts merged contacts into their own row if they have different first/last names.
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• Image upload naming cleanup:
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  • spaces/parentheses now automatically become underscores (e.g., Image (2) → Image_2)
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  • names ending in z now get a trailing underscore (e.g., Imagez → Imagez_)
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• Candy got even better at using the new Docs for responses.
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• Password reset now shows a clear “Your link has expired” screen (links expire after 24 hours).
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• Fixed participant filter inside another participant’s manual assign/unassign page not working properly.
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• Participant Details PhotoTag assignment UI: merged participants no longer incorrectly show PhotoTags as assigned.

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📣 Marketing Fixes

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• Fixed edge cases where galleries that were only AI-edited images could cause follow-up email marketing issues and show as 0 images on Participant List.
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• Fixed Day0 marketing edge case not starting if gallery is just AI-edited images.
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• SMS gallery links now include “View photos:” before the gallery URL to reduce confusion where some users thought the gallery link was an unsubscribe link.

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That’s the week! 💫

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Between the Lightroom Classic plugin, the Capture App’s new Network Speed Test, and retail improvements that reduce confusion (and improve performance), this week was packed with practical wins you’ll feel right away.

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Keep it sparkly,

Candy