📸 Candy’s 12 Days of Christmas: Day 5 – International Customer Support 🌍✨
By
Candy
on
December 18, 2024
|
3
minute read
Hello again, globally-minded photographers! 🎅
Candy here, and welcome to Day 5 of our 12 Days of Christmas countdown.
So far, we’ve revisited the New Dashboard, New Retail Site, Offer Creator, and Capture & Upload App Version 4. Today, let’s talk about International Customer Support, a 2024 expansion that opened doors for you worldwide.
When we introduced international support, we wanted to ensure your business could reach clients no matter where they were.
Here’s what made it possible:
Global Marketing Texts & Links: Major countries now receive marketing messages just like your local clients, helping you stay connected across borders.
International Orders & Shipping: Clients from virtually any country can order digital and physical products. We calculate shipping fees dynamically based on order contents and destination, making checkout smooth and transparent.
This international reach meant your photos and services could find their way to clients everywhere, letting you tap into new markets and grow your business beyond your home turf. 🎉
Check back tomorrow for Day 6 as we continue this festive journey through 2024’s best features. And remember, something special is coming on December 25th!
Candy here with a weekly recap—there’s a very exciting Capture App addition this week: Action Mode for Sports events! We’ve also got a few Dashboard and Check-In fixes to keep things moving smoothly.
Let’s take a look.
📱 Capture App 5.8: New Action Mode
Capture App 5.8 introduces a brand-new Action Mode shooting mode for Sports events.
🏷️ Automatically tag photos with PhotoTags while shooting
Action Mode lets you select a PhotoTag and automatically apply it to the photos you take, using a familiar PhotoTag selection flow similar to managing PhotoTags for group images.
🏈 Built for sports workflows
Action Mode appears for Sports events:
On Positive ID events, it shows up all the time
On Face Matching events, it shows up when the Event has PhotoTags
📸 Shoot freely in Positive ID
This also allows you to shoot freely in Positive ID events without first adding a participant—something that wasn’t previously possible.
👥 Not the same as Group Photos
Action Mode applies PhotoTags while shooting, but it does not mark images as group images.
🤖 Android RAW+JPEG reconnect improvement
Improved behavior on Android when shooting in RAW+JPEG while reconnecting the camera multiple times.
Why it’s helpful:
Action photographers can now organize images into PhotoTags while they shoot, making it much easier for subjects accessing the gallery live at the Event to browse the All Images Gallery to filter down to the right team, game, division, or group on the retail site when you are live-uploading your action shots.
This is especially useful when you’re promoting an All Images Gallery QR code at an event and sending subjects directly to retail. Combined with the new sign-in requirement for Favorites, subjects can save favorite images and access them later from any device—setting the stage for even more action-event workflow improvements in the future.
You can even utilize the new Auto Edit feature to potentially review and edit your action photos before they go live to the gallery with AI! Try out the beta "Improve Action Shot" node in Candy Image Studio on some test photos to see how it works for you.
🛍️ Retail Updates
📦 Packages now prefill with the selected image
When a shopper starts a package from an image, eligible package items will now auto-fill with that image. Customers can still change any product, but this makes ordering larger packages much faster.
Note: Group images won’t prefill non-group products, non-group images won’t prefill group products, downloads beyond the first won't prefill, and products requiring captions or multiple images won’t be prefilled.
🧩 Package editor UI refreshed
Configured products now show a clearer Change Image button, and product names + image controls are grouped together to reduce confusion.
🛒 Packages now have a landing screen
Packages now open with an overview of what’s included before the shopper continues into the editor.
⭐ Sign-in required for Favorites
Shoppers now sign in before adding Favorites, which lets their Favorites sync across devices when they use the same account.
🖼️ Dynamic Gallery additions fixed
User-added Dynamic Gallery images now persist correctly after refresh and appear properly in Dynamic Gallery purchases.
🛡️ GalleryGuard improvements
Additional GalleryGuard improvements were made to help protect retail images.
😊 Face Finder visibility fixes
The Show Face Match Groups Offer setting now hides the Face Finder filter as expected, including when Zoom Cropping is enabled.
🖥️ Dashboard Improvements
⚡ PhotoRoster pages are faster
All PhotoRoster pages should feel a little quicker.
🚫 Clearer upload error for invalid XMP metadata
The Upload Images page now shows “Invalid Metadata (XMP)” for a rare export issue that can happen with some Adobe workflows.
🎨 Image Converter Display P3 fix
The Image Converter Tool now correctly converts Display P3 images to sRGB when Convert to sRGB is enabled.
🤳 Check-In Website Fix
🏷️ Team/group selection false error fixed
Fixed an issue where selecting a team or group could incorrectly show an error saying the selfie failed to upload.
That’s the update for this week!
Action Mode is the big highlight—especially for sports photographers who want instant PhotoTag organization while shooting.
Candy here with another weekly recap! This week brings some great upgrades to Virtual Group Builder, new Candy Image Studio tools, better Docs search, and a solid Capture App update with helpful color profile and PhotoTag improvements.
Let’s take a look!
🧑🤝🧑 Virtual Group Builder Improvements
Virtual Group Builder got a nice set of workflow upgrades this week:
🏷️ Create Virtual Groups directly from PhotoTags
On the PhotoTags page, click Create under the VGroup column to automatically start a new Virtual Group using participants from that PhotoTag. You’ll also get a popup asking whether to use each participant’s first or last cutout.
🚀 Save works-in-progress with placeholders
You can now save changes to a Virtual Group even if some subjects still have spaceman placeholders.
All subjects still need a selected photo before uploading the finished Virtual Group to the Event.
🖼️ Overlay uploads can now be named
When uploading overlays, you can name them so they’re easier to search and find later.
🔤 More control over subject name styling
Title Case is now only applied on import, meaning you can use the subject inspector to customize name casing afterward.
📐 New text display option
There’s a new Display setting to disable justified text.
🌫️ Bottom Vignette improvements
Bottom Vignette rendering has been reworked for better results.
🔎 More flexible scaling
Max global scale is now 200%.
🎨 Candy Image Studio: New Editing Nodes
Candy Image Studio has two new tools to help clean up common image issues:
👔 Dewrinkle Clothes
Helps smooth distracting clothing wrinkles while keeping the image natural.
🖼️ Restore Old Photo
A new restoration-style node for improving older or damaged images.
📱 Capture App 5.7 Updates
App Store update released Monday, June 22
Capture App 5.7 includes some meaningful workflow and compatibility improvements:
🎨 Automatic sRGB conversion
If an image is detected as non-sRGB, the app will now try to automatically convert it to sRGB. If it can’t, you’ll still get the existing invalid color profile warning.
This can be especially useful for black-and-white shooting modes that output a different color profile. That said, we still recommend shooting in sRGB whenever possible, since conversion can cause some color loss and may use extra battery during long sessions.
🧾 User Comment shown in EXIF details
The image gallery details popup now shows EXIF User Comment data, including whether an image was auto-converted to sRGB.
✂️ BGR visibility sync
Visibility changes in BGR folders now affect the cutout too. Mark the original hidden, and the cutout will hide; mark it visible again, and the cutout becomes visible as well.
🏢 Business logo support
Your business/profile logo now appears in the Capture App header when available, and can replace Candy in Photo Booth.
⚙️ Contact collection settings moved
Number, email, and name collection settings now live on the Event Overview instead of the Event login sheet, so you don’t need to re-log to change them.
🏷️ Event picker shows PhotoTag attribute
If an Event has PhotoTags, the Event picker now makes that easier to spot.
📱 Android UI fixes
Fixed several label cutoff issues for Android users with Bold Text enabled.
🔁 Restore Session fix
PhotoTags now load properly when an Event is opened through Restore Session.
🎨 Adobe RGB handling fixed on Android
Android devices will no longer incorrectly accept Adobe RGB images from cameras.
🍎 iOS 27 support tested
iOS 27 has been tested, and no issues were found. The app also respects the latest Liquid Glass device settings.
If you update your device to a beta version of iOS 27, let us know if you experience issues!
🏷️ Collect PhotoTags during check-in
Participants can now select their own PhotoTag, such as team name, before entering contact information. This option appears when the Event has PhotoTags.
We added this primarily to assist photographers in easily tagging late additions not on a roster that show up to a photoshoot, but there will be additional features for action photography in next week's update!
📱 Capture App 5.7.1
OTA update released Friday, June 26
🛠️ Miscellaneous UI fixes
A small OTA update with additional interface polish and cleanup.
🖥️ Dashboard Improvements
🔎 Docs Search is here
Click Search on the Docs page to search NowCandid documentation, with Candy navigation agent support.
📂 PhotoRoster image name cleanup
PhotoRoster data file uploads and image uploads now automatically remove spaces and certain special characters from image names.
🖼️ Full-frame overlay previews are downloadable
In the Image Overlay Editor, full-frame example render previews can now be downloaded just like banner previews.
🛍️ Retail Update
🪟 Better desktop popup behavior
On desktop, retail popups now automatically become scrollable if the popup is taller than the viewport height, matching Dashboard behavior.
📣 Marketing Fix
✉️ Email campaigns fixed for email-only PhotoRoster participants
Fixed an edge case where email-only PhotoRoster participants were not having their email campaigns start.
That’s the week!
From faster Virtual Group setup to better PhotoTag collection in the Capture App, these changes should help make your Event workflows more flexible and easier to manage.
This week’s updates include some helpful improvements across Virtual Group Builder, reporting, image conversion, participant management, and folder downloads.
The biggest highlight is a new Auto Headsize option in Virtual Group Builder, designed to give you a much better starting point when building virtual groups. We also added a new BGR Report to help you see which backgrounds are being ordered most, plus a few quality-of-life improvements throughout the Dashboard.
Let’s take a look!
🧑🤝🧑 Virtual Group Builder Improvements
✨ New Auto Headsize button
Virtual Group Builder now has a new Auto Headsize button.
This feature automatically detects faces and adjusts the scale and vertical offset of all cutouts so that subjects have roughly the same head size and are closer to eye level.
That means when you’re building a virtual group, you should have a much better starting point before making your final manual adjustments.
🏷️ Improved PhotoTag import behavior
We improved the behavior when importing a PhotoTag into Virtual Group Builder, helping that workflow feel smoother when adding subjects from a specific PhotoTag.
🚀 Upload fix for new from-scratch Virtual Groups
Fixed an issue where uploads were not uploading properly when working from /new on a from-scratch Virtual Group instead of an existing one.
👥 Smarter default subject behavior
Virtual Group Builder now skips the initial “add to group or replace group” popup when the only subjects in the group are the default 8 subjects.
🖼️ Bottom logo spacing improved
Bottom logos are now spaced the same distance from the bottom as top logos are from the top.
📊 Reporting Updates
📈 Events and Sales Report tables now have sortable columns
The Events Report and Sales Report tables now support sortable columns, making it easier to review and organize report data directly in the table.
🎨 New BGR Report
There is now a new BGR Report that shows the most ordered backgrounds for BGR images.
The report shows:
How many orders a background has
How many items a background has
Important note: if you upload the same background to multiple Events, those will show up as different backgrounds in the report. To avoid that, use the background import feature.
🖼️ Image Converter Update
📱 HEIC conversion is now supported
The Image Convert page at tools/convert now supports converting from HEIC files.
This should be helpful when working with images from devices that commonly save in HEIC format.
👥 Participant List Update
🏷️ Set PhotoTags for selected participants
On the Participant List page, the selected participants popup now includes a new option to set PhotoTags for those selected participants.
This gives you another way to update participant organization in bulk.
📂 Manage Images Update
⬇️ Download Folder improvements
The Download Folder feature on the Manage Images page now includes an X/X counter while downloading.
We also improved the behavior when downloading a folder with hundreds of images, which should make larger folder downloads clearer and more manageable.
That’s the week!
This week’s updates should make several everyday workflows smoother: Virtual Group Builder now has a stronger starting point with Auto Headsize, BGR background performance is easier to review, HEIC files are easier to convert, participant PhotoTags are easier to update, and large folder downloads are clearer.
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.