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Wrapping Up Grad Season: Key Takeaways for Photographers Using GradPics Now

Wrapping Up Grad Season: Key Takeaways for Photographers Using GradPics Now

As we move past the mid-way point of graduation season, it's a perfect time to reflect on the key takeaways and strategies that can boost your photography business in these last handful of ceremonies.

The impact of using NowCandid's GradPics Now program has been significant for photographers working both large and small events. Here’s a look at what we've learned so far and how you can make the most of the remaining graduations.

Tips for a Successful 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. Focus on capturing the best possible shots in-camera and ensure speedy delivery to clients.

2. Stick to SRGB Color Profiles for Retouching

If retouching is necessary, save images in an SRGB color profile. This ensures consistency and vibrancy across all viewing platforms, enhancing the overall appeal of your photos to clients.

3. Use Direct Flash to Enhance Image Quality

Proper lighting is crucial, 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 stand out.

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

Always be prepared for the unexpected. Carry extra batteries and a backup camera to all events. This ensures uninterrupted shooting, even if your primary camera fails or batteries run out.

NowCandid Best Practices: Selfie Check-In Workflow

NowCandid's Selfie Check-In workflow is designed to streamline the graduation photography process, making it easier for photographers to manage large events and ensuring every graduate's moment is captured. Here's how to effectively use this feature:

  • Ensure Participation: Encourage every graduate to use the Selfie Check-In upon arrival. Consider assigning assistants to facilitate this process and ensure a smooth workflow.
  • Visibility: Utilize multiple QR code placements—signs, lanyards, and handheld QR code signs—to ensure no one misses out. This increases the chances of capturing every graduate.
  • Extended Reach: Gather information not just from graduates, but also their families. This expands your marketing reach and increases the potential for sales.

Highlighting Best Performing Graduations with NowCandid

The power of NowCandid's tools is evident in the outstanding performance of several recent graduation events:

  • An Oklahoma Medical College Commencement
    • ~150 graduates
    • ~$65 sales per graduate
    • ~$9,750 in sales

  • An Oklahoma Graduate School Commencement
    • ~115 graduates
    • ~$41.50 sales per graduate
    • ~$4,772.50 in sales

  • A Louisiana Medical College Commencement
    • ~175 graduates
    • ~$40 sales per graduate
    • ~$7,000 in sales

  • A Louisiana College Commencement
    • ~250 graduates
    • ~$37.50 sales per graduate
    • ~$9,375 in sales

  • An Alaska College Graduation Ceremony
    • ~100 graduates
    • ~$21 sales per graduate
    • ~$2,100 in sales

All these events were photographed in the last two months, showcasing the incredible potential of leveraging NowCandid for your graduation photography needs.

Ready to Elevate Your Graduation Photography?

There's still time to use NowCandid for your upcoming graduation events. If you have any questions or need help setting up an event, our experts Jack and Darwin are here to assist you.

Schedule a session with them today at https://calendly.com/nowcandid-training to ensure you're fully prepared to make this graduation season your most successful yet!

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Weekly Recap: Easier Shopping, Bilingual Check-Ins & More!
Feature Updates
May 30, 2025

Weekly Recap: Easier Shopping, Bilingual Check-Ins & More!

2
 minutes read
Hey there! 👋

Candy here with your weekly dose of NowCandid™ updates!

We’ve rolled out some helpful new features to make check-ins smoother, shopping more intuitive, and checkouts faster. Let’s take a peek! 👀

🌍 ¡Check-In en Español!

We’ve added Spanish language support for all customer check-in pages, including:

  • • Selfie Check-In™
  • • Simple Check-In
  • • Scan Card Check-In

The system will auto-detect the user’s browser language and serve the Spanish version when appropriate.

More languages are planned in the future, so stay tuned! 🌐

Bonus: We also have added Spanish versions of the Privacy Policy & Terms of Use for end customers to use!

🛍 Easier Package Shopping 🖼️

Package selection just got a serious upgrade! 🎁

When a customer is picking images for each item in a Package, they’ll now see:

  • • Tabs to toggle between All Images and their Personal Gallery
  • • Pagination to easily flip through the All Images Tab

This is especially useful when customers are shopping for Packages directly from a link to the All Images Gallery — now it’s easier to browse and find their perfect shot! 💫

🛠 Miscellaneous Fixes & Tweaks

Here’s a quick roundup of other small (but mighty!) improvements this week:

  • 🏷️ Empty PhotoTags™ no longer appear on the retail site — cleaner and simpler for your customers!
  • 💸 Venmo now shows up more consistently as an express checkout option.
  • 📅 Interested in attending Summer Seminar 2025 in OKC? Head to the Profile Page in your dashboard for the invite and sign-up link!
  • 🐞 Tons of small bug fixes and polish across the platform. We’re always working to keep things speedy, intuitive, and delightful!

See you next week with more exciting improvements!

As always, if you need anything — just ask me!😄

Cheers,

Candy

Weekly Recap: Clarity Campaign, Offer Previews & Fresh Fixes!🎯
Feature Updates
May 23, 2025

Weekly Recap: Clarity Campaign, Offer Previews & Fresh Fixes!🎯

4
 minutes read
Hey there, photography superheroes! 🦸‍♀️📸

This week, we've launched a wave of updates designed to make the NowCandid™ experience smoother, clearer, and even more photographer-friendly.

From helpful interface changes to new sharing tools and fixes to long-standing quirks—there’s a lot to cover, so let’s jump in!

💡 The Clarity Campaign: Making Things Make More Sense™

We’ve been listening to feedback and noticed some common points of confusion around terminology in the dashboard, reports, and app. So, we’re making some well-needed name changes that we think will make life easier for everyone—especially new users just getting started.

Here’s what’s changing:

  • • GroupTag(s)PhotoTag(s)

    A more intuitive name to describe this helpful organization tool!
  • • FaceMatch ImportPhotoRosters™
    • “FaceMatch Import” is now “PhotoRosters”
    • “FaceGroups” are now “PhotoRosters”
    • “Organizations” remain the same
  • • Participant(s)Contact(s) (most places)
    • On reports and list pages, you'll now see “Contacts” or "Participants & Contacts" instead
    • “Participants” now refers only to Contacts with matched or assigned images
  • • Home tabReports tab

    Plus, “Events” is now the first tab in the dashboard navigation, making the flow easier for new users!

These aren’t just name changes—they’re clarity boosters designed to help everyone understand the platform faster and more fully. 💡

Reports will be updated next week as well to reflect this changes, hopefully making them even more accurate & helpful! We love reporting & analytics around here.

🔍 Price & Product Preview Pages

Photographers can now generate read-only URLs of their Offers to share with school officials, parents, or event organizers ahead of time.

✅ What this means:

  • • You can preview exactly what the pricing and product lineups will look like
  • • Share a clean, professional view of your Offer—no dashboard access required
  • • Useful for gatekeepers who need to approve pricing or product options in advance

Find this option in the Offers tab today! 🚀

Found via the Offers tab on the Web Dashboard

Or check out the preview for yourself, using this link here!

⚙️ Dashboard Tweaks & Tools

Small changes = big improvements to your workflow. Here's what's new:

  • ✉️ You can now edit your Business Email in Profile Settings (this affects retail site contact and backprinting!)
Editable via "Business Info" within your Profile Settings on the Web Dashboard!
  • 🧮 Unassigned Image Count added to the image count popup in Manage Images
Found via the graph icon near the top of an Event's Manage Images page!
  • 🔁 Associated Events now visible at the PhotoRoster level (not just at the Org level)
  • 📜 Offer Logs! You can now view an edit history of each Custom Offer, including edits made by you or the NowCandid™ team

🔧 Notable Fixes

We’ve patched some common hiccups:

  • 📱 Selfie Check-In bugs on newer Samsung phones
  • 📷 Fixes for uploading from camera roll on iOS
  • 🖼️ Memory Mate product bug affecting custom background rendering
  • 🚫 Express Checkout bug fix: clearer error when customers enter short names (like initials)

That’s all for this week, friends! 🥳

We're making NowCandid™ easier to use and even more powerful than ever. Thanks for sticking with us and letting us be part of your photography business journey!

If you’ve got questions, hit up Candy, our ever-present AI helper—or book a session with our team!

Until next time, keep capturing those unforgettable moments. 📸✨

Cheers and sparkles,

Candy 🍬

Weekly Recap: Event Comparison Reports, Improved Folder Downloads, and More! 🍬
Feature Updates
May 16, 2025

Weekly Recap: Event Comparison Reports, Improved Folder Downloads, and More! 🍬

4
 minutes read
Hey there, photo friends!

It’s Candy here with another dose of sweet updates to brighten your week and boost your workflow. Let’s take a look at what’s new across the NowCandid™ universe! 🌟

📊 New Event Comparison Report

Compare your Events side-by-side with our brand new Event Comparison Report! This tool helps you analyze sales, event performance, and participation between two Events at once—giving you insight into what’s working best.

Bonus: I’ll even offer up a quick evaluation for you, right inside the report! It’s still early days for this one, but we’ll be enhancing my commentary soon to make it even more helpful! 💬

Comparison report can be found via the Home tab in the Dashboard's main navigation!

🖼️ Download Entire Folders — With or Without Overlay Art

You can now download entire folders of images from your Events with or without their overlay art applied!

✨ This is a major upgrade from the old version that:

  • • Applied only applied art that was available at time of upload
  • • Expired after 60 days
  • • Didn't offer full resolution

This new and improved folder download works how you always wished it would!

Found via the download icon on an Event's Manage Images page!

📷 Selfie Check-In: Camera Roll Option for Camera Issues

Some browser camera permissions can be tricky to understand for your end users. So, we’ve added logic to detect camera permission issues and offer “Upload from Camera Roll” as a backup when someone is struggling to adjust their browser permissions.

Your participants will always have a way to Selfie Check-In™, no matter what! 😊

Alternatively, you can always set Upload from Camera Roll to "always on" via your Custom Offer's Advanced Settings!

🆓 New Offer Setting for Overlay-Only Free Downloads

Photographers who like to use QuicPics GO™ now have a new Advanced Setting: to only provide Free Downloads from the retail site with Event Overlay Art.

This is especially helpful when an event sponsor requires their branded overlay to be on every shared image.

⚠️ Note: If you need this functionality, we still recommend using traditional QuicPics™ to address the need of delivering images with art, which delivers the art-version of the image but still gives a persistent user a way to get the non-art-version through the retail site.
Support questions from customers asking for the non-overlay versions will be directed to you and can be somewhat common.

Found via your Custom Offer's Advanced Settings!

🛠️ Miscellaneous Tweaks & Fixes

Here’s a quick roundup of the smaller (but mighty!) improvements we made this week:

  • 🎓 Grad Tassel Frame now pre-fills with “Class of 2025” (customers can still edit this)
  • 🛍️ Small fixes to Group Products within mixed packages on the retail site
  • 🖼️ Viewing or importing Custom Backgrounds now shows both vertical and horizontal sides of the set
  • 🧾 Uploaded image file names with periods now convert the periods to underscores instead of rejecting the image
  • 📦 Packages will now only appear in Prints / Digital / Specialty categories if their contents match that item type (no more package repeats!)
  • 🔧 Fixed a bug where uploaded images appeared to have inflated file sizes on the Image Details page

That’s a wrap for this week’s recap!

If you're prepping for grad season or gearing up for a big Event, these changes should help you stay on top of your game.

As always, let me know if you have questions—I'm here 24/7 to help. 🧠💡

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.

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.

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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.

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