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Darwin's Quic Tips for Mastering Graduation Photography

Darwin's Quic Tips for Mastering Graduation Photography
Graduation season is a bustling time for photographers.

Capturing the essence of such a monumental event requires not just skill but also the right strategy. At NowCandid, we understand this well, which is why our GradPics Now program is designed to maximize both the quality and efficiency of your graduation photography services.

Here, Darwin, our long-time Photography Specialist with a wealth of experience in graduation events, shares his top tips to help you excel this graduation season.

1. Prioritize Speed Over Extensive Retouching

In the fast-paced environment of graduation ceremonies, the quick delivery of photos can significantly boost your sales. Darwin emphasizes that speed in making images available often trumps the detailed retouching of images in terms of sales impact.

Graduates and families appreciate quick access to their photos to share their special moments. Therefore, focus on capturing the best possible shots in-camera.

2. Stick to SRGB Color Profiles for Retouching

If retouching is necessary, Darwin advises saving images in an SRGB color profile. This ensures that your photos look consistent and vibrant across all viewing platforms, be it digital devices or prints, enhancing the overall appeal of your photos to clients.

3. Use Direct Flash to Enhance Image Quality

Proper lighting is crucial in photography, especially in the varied environments of graduation venues. Using direct flash can help mitigate common lighting issues such as facial shadows, ensuring your subjects are evenly lit and standout.

This simple technique can significantly improve the color and clarity of your photos, making them more appealing to your clients.

4. Be Prepared: Carry Extra Batteries and a Backup Camera

Always be prepared for the unexpected. Darwin recommends carrying extra batteries and a backup camera to all events. This ensures that you can continue shooting uninterrupted, even if your primary camera fails or batteries run out.

Being prepared is key to a smooth operation during busy events like graduations.

Darwin's Impressive Track Record

Darwin brings a vast amount of practical knowledge to the table, having managed the capture of over 35,152 graduation images in just the last two weeks of this season alone. His experience underscores the effectiveness of these tips in real-world settings.

Why Choose GradPics Now?

NowCandid's GradPics Now program is tailored to streamline the graduation photography process. By integrating Darwin's tips and our state-of-the-art technology, photographers can not only enhance their efficiency but also improve their sales potential.

The program supports instant uploading and sorting of images, enabling photographers to focus more on capturing great shots and less on post-event workflows.

Graduation season doesn't have to be overwhelming.

With the right tools and strategies, you can turn this busy time into a highly profitable and fulfilling part of your photography career. Embrace these tips, utilize GradPics Now, and capture the milestones with confidence and efficiency.

Ready to transform your graduation photography approach?

Join the many photographers who have already found success with NowCandid. Learn more about GradPics Now and schedule a session with Darwin to fine-tune your strategy. Let’s make this graduation season your best yet!

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Big News: Introducing Client Outreach 🚀📣
Feature Updates
April 3, 2026

Big News: Introducing Client Outreach 🚀📣

6
 minutes read
Hey photo friends! 👋

This is a big one.

We’re excited to introduce Client Outreach — a brand-new tool that lets you reach your customers directly with one-off texts and emails, completely separate from your normal event marketing.

Whether you’re following up after an event, promoting future bookings, or nudging people who missed check-in… this gives you a simple, flexible way to stay connected.

Let’s break it down 👇

📣 What is Client Outreach?

Client Outreach lets you:

📩 Send one-off emails and texts

👥 Build contact lists from:

  • Existing events
  • Uploaded spreadsheets
  • Or both combined

🎯 Filter contacts based on:

  • Contacts with matched images
  • Contacts without matched images
  • Or everyone

This is not automated campaign messaging — it’s intentional, targeted outreach when you need it.

👥 Build Your Audience, Your Way

When creating an outreach list, you’ve got flexibility:

  • Pull contacts from one event, multiple events, or none
  • Upload your own spreadsheet of contacts
  • Combine both sources into one list

And when using events, you can choose:

  • Only people with images
  • Only people without images
  • Or everyone

That opens the door to some really useful workflows (more on that below 👀).

💬 SMS Outreach (Simple & Familiar)

Sending texts is designed to feel easy and familiar.

🧾 Uses a QuicPics-style editor + preview

✍️ Write your message and send to your list

🔗 Include links (galleries, check-in, etc.)

💸 Pricing:

$0.01 per segment, per text

A segment is roughly:

  • ~140 characters (standard text)
  • ~65 characters (if using emojis)

Longer messages may use multiple segments (typically 2–4).

📧 Email Outreach (Powered by Candy 🤖)

This is where things get really fun.

Instead of building emails manually…

👉 You just describe what you want, and Candy builds the email for you.

✨ How it works:

Tell Candy things like:

  • What the email should say
  • What tone you want (fun, professional, urgent, etc.)
  • What your call-to-action button should say
  • Where that button should link

Candy will:

✍️ Write the email

🎨 Design the layout

🧠 Generate a subject line

🏷️ Pull in your business info automatically

No HTML. No formatting headaches. Just describe it.

🧠 Even Smarter with Events

Every outreach must be tied to an event (for billing/history), but that unlocks some extra power:

If your outreach is related to that event, Candy can pull in things like:

🔗 Check-in links

🖼️ Cover photos

🖼️ Gallery links

And more!

👉 You can still override this and use your own URLs — Candy will follow your instructions.

📬 Sending Details

Emails are sent from:
your-business-name@quic.pics

Your business name is prominently shown in the inbox

You can edit the subject line Candy generates before sending

💸 Email Pricing

$0.01 per 10 emails (rounded up)

Examples:

  • 10 emails = $0.01
  • 11–19 emails = $0.02

🖼️ Bonus Tip: Include Images in Emails

If you have direct image URLs, you can give them to Candy and ask her to include them in the email.

Not sure how to get those? Google is your friend on this one 😄

📊 Track Performance

Just like order receipts, you can see:

👀 Opens

🖱️ Clicks

❌ Bounces

So you know what’s working.

💡 Real-World Use Cases

Here are just a few ideas:

📸 Catch Missed Check-Ins

Send a Selfie Check-In link after an event using a roster from a school or organizer.

📅 Promote Future Events

Reach past customers and say:
“Hey, we’re photographing again next week!”

🏈 Action Sports Galleries

Send All Images Gallery links when using Jersey Jotter (where face matching isn’t ideal).

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 New Group Photos Added

Let people know:
“Your group photos are now live!”

📝 Post-Event Surveys

Send feedback forms to improve your next event.

🔔 Picture Day Reminders

Get ahead of the event with reminders to increase participation.

And that’s just scratching the surface.

🎯 Simple, Flexible, Powerful

Client Outreach is designed to be:

✅ Easy to use

🎯 Highly targeted

🔄 Flexible for different workflows

💸 Cost-effective

You’re in control of when, who, and what you send.

This is one of those tools that grows with you — whether you’re running small events or large-scale operations.

We can’t wait to see how you use it! 👀

More soon,

Candy 🍬

Weekly Recap: Client Outreach, Better Renders & Faster Tools 🍬📣
Feature Updates
April 3, 2026

Weekly Recap: Client Outreach, Better Renders & Faster Tools 🍬📣

5
 minutes read
Hey photo friends! 👋

This week’s headline is a big one: Client Outreach is here. It’s a powerful new way to connect with your customers outside of event-based marketing—and it opens up a ton of new possibilities for growing your business.

We’ll keep this recap focused on what it does at a high level, and we’ll link out to a full deep-dive guide so you can see exactly how to use it.

📣 NEW: Client Outreach (SMS + Email)

Client Outreach is a brand-new messaging system that lets you send texts and emails outside of your event campaigns.

👉 Learn more here: www.nowcandid.com/blogs/big-news-introducing-client-outreach-sms-email

What it can do:

📩 Send one-off emails and texts to past customers

📊 Track engagement (opens, clicks, bounces, etc.)

📂 Build contact lists from:

  • Events (with or without matched images)
  • Uploaded spreadsheets
  • Or both combined

🤖 Candy-powered email creation

  • Candy can write and design your outreach emails for you—including subject lines—so you don’t have to mess with formatting or HTML.

Why it matters:

This unlocks a ton of real-world use cases, like:

  • Sending Selfie Check-In links after an event
  • Promoting future bookings to past customers
  • Sharing All Images Galleries for action/sports events
  • Notifying customers about new uploads (like group photos)
  • Sending surveys or follow-ups

💸 Pricing is simple:

  • $0.01 per 10 emails
  • $0.01 per SMS (per segment, and longer texts may be 2–4 segments)

This is one of the most powerful tools we’ve added in a while!

🛍️ Retail: Better Products & Previews

✨ The following products will now always have the SoftTouch finish

  • Premium Prints
  • Premium Plaques
  • Luxe Prints
  • Titled Luxe Prints (coming soon)

🖼️ Improved 2D & 3D renders (especially Luxe)

  • More accurate lighting and better overall presentation.

🎯 3D renders prioritized in store sheet

  • The first three supported products now show as 3D when available.
  • Premium products take priority, but Luxe can now appear too depending on your offer.

Faster, higher-quality background generation

  • Better results, quicker turnaround.

📝 Caption fields no longer require every line

  • Customers can fill what you want, skip what they don’t.

🖥️ Dashboard Improvements

🔎 Smarter search across events & reports

  • Partial matches now work helping you search your events when you can't remember their exact names.
  • E.g. “mustang prom” will let you find “Mustang High School Prom 2025”.

Faster reports & charts

  • Reports pages and dashboard landing load quicker and use fewer resources.

🎨 New “Green Screen” node in Candy Image Studio

  • Instantly convert backgrounds into a green screen for use with your other editing workflows.

🧾 More flexible Offer creation

  • You can now duplicate any existing Price Level when creating an Offer, not just your own or prebuilt ones.

💳 Accounts must now have ACH set up before creating events

  • This has been a point of confusion for some users for some time.
  • By simply requiring ACH info, we can avoid a lot of accounting confusion for photographers down the line!

💰 New “Payout Breakdown” on Order Details

  • Visual, color-coded breakdown of order totals for better clarity.

📱 Capture App 5.4.2 (iOS & Android)

🛠️ Fixed an issue where the background removal popup would reappear after confirming and exiting shooting mode.

That’s the week!

Client Outreach is the star of the show here—it gives you a whole new way to stay connected with your customers beyond the event itself.

Pair that with better product presentation and faster tools, and you’ve got a strong upgrade across the board.

More coming soon! 👀

Candy 🍬

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

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

2
 minutes read
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 🍬

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.

  • List One
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