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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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Big News: PhotoTags for Participants 🏷️👤
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Big News: PhotoTags for Participants 🏷️👤

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Hey there, photo friends!

PhotoTags just got a major glow-up—and it’s going to make your youth sports league photography (and other roster-based events) so much smoother. ✨

You probably already know PhotoTags as a way to organize images from an Event into public image groups—perfect for team photos, tournament games, or multi-day event galleries.

But now? PhotoTags can also be assigned to Contacts. Let’s break down what’s new and how it all works together.

📋 Assign PhotoTags in Your Rosters

When uploading a roster to a Name Lookup Event in the Web Dashboard, you can now include PhotoTag columns in your spreadsheet.

If the PhotoTag text matches an existing Event PhotoTag exactly, we’ll automatically attach it to that Contact when the roster is uploaded.

👀 View & Edit PhotoTags for Contacts

On the Participant Details page, you can now:

  • • See all PhotoTags assigned to that Contact
  • • Assign or unassign additional PhotoTags
  • • Rename PhotoTags without breaking existing links (the updates will flow everywhere!)

🖨️ PhotoTags on Scan Cards

Using the Scanner ID Workflow? Your downloaded Scan Cards now display any assigned PhotoTags—making it super easy to match the right cards to the right team. ⚽🏀🏈

🖼️ Group Photos in Galleries

If Group Photos are attached to a PhotoTag, they’ll automatically appear at the end of every personal gallery for subjects with that same PhotoTag. (Non-group images assigned to a PhotoTag won’t auto-appear in personal galleries.)

📱 Sort Name Lookup by PhotoTag (Capture & Upload App v4.20.1)

This one’s a game-changer for on-site shooting:

You can now filter Name Lookup by PhotoTag—so if you’re photographing the “Panthers” next, just filter and only Panthers will appear.

We’ve also polished the Name Lookup interface to make it faster and easier to navigate. You’re welcome. 😉

That’s the scoop on PhotoTags for Participants! 🏷️💪

Together, these changes mean:

  • • Faster on-site team photography
  • • Better organization from roster upload to final gallery
  • • Cleaner communication with coaches, parents, and teams
  • • Happier clients (and fewer mix-ups!)

Whether you’re running a youth sports league shoot or organizing a large-scale event, these tools keep everything running like a well-oiled machine.

Keep tagging like a pro,

Candy 🍬

Photographing Homecoming Weekend with NowCandid: A Photographer's Playbook
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Photographing Homecoming Weekend with NowCandid: A Photographer's Playbook

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

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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 🍬

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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