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Weekly Recap: Retail Refinements, Product Pricing, and BGR Upgrades

Weekly Recap: Retail Refinements, Product Pricing, and BGR Upgrades
Hey there, it’s Candy!

This week’s update brings smoother retail experiences, friendlier pricing on customer favorites like statuettes, and a full refresh of how background-removed images (BGR) work across the site.

Let’s dive into what’s new!

🖼️ BGR x Retail: A More Intuitive, Sellable Experience

Big changes have landed to make Background Removed (BGR) images shine where it matters... in your customers’ galleries and carts.

Here’s what changed:

  • BGR Renders in Personal Gallery Downloads: Pre-rendered BGR images are now included in the downloadable gallery, making products more attractive and support calls less frequent.
  • 🔄 Smarter Image Order in Retail Gallery:
    1. Background 1 pre-renders
    2. Cutouts with "Select a Background" labels
    3. Original Images
    4. Backgrounds 2–4 Pre-Rendered
    5. Group Photos / PhotoTagged images
  • 🛍️ Smarter Package Image Selection:
    • Pre-rendered BGR images now appear during image selection for packages.
    • Ordering of images follows the same flow as above, bringing consistency across the experience.
  • 📱 Mobile Background Step Skipped:
    • Pre-renders act more like real images now, with background selection skipped on Mobile devices to reduce confusion.
    • Background selection still available on Desktop
  • 💡 Visual Cue for BGRs:
    • BGR images now feature a subtle “Select a Background” overlay to help guide customer expectations and improve product engagement.

Theme: Liquorice

🏷️ Product Pricing Updates (Including Lower Statuette Costs!)

We've made changes to product pricing and shipping rates, with statuettes dropping over 40% in product cost!

Some costs have gone up slightly, but others went down—here’s a rundown of the biggest changes:

🧾 Highlights:

  • 📉 5×7 Statuette: $12.24 → $6.97 (↓ 43.06%)
  • 📉 8×10 Statuette: $17.21 → $9.97 (↓ 42.05%)
  • 📈 Travel Mug: $11.09 → $12.19 (↑ 9.92%)
  • 📈 16×20 Hanging Metal Print: $66.42 → $71.83 (↑ 8.15%)
  • 📉 11×14 Group Print (Shipping): $7.25 → $7.00 (↓ 3.45%)

More detailed breakdown at the end of the post!

🧍‍♂️ Live Statuette Previews with Cutout Images

When a customer selects a BGR image, statuettes & acrylic cutout magnets will now render in real time using their PNG cutout—just like our other dynamically-rendering products!

No more generic preview. What they see is what they’ll get. 👌

Theme: Liquorice

🎆 New Retail Theme: Pop Rocks (Just in Time for the 4th of July!)

Get ready to light up your storefront! Our brand-new Pop Rocks retail theme has officially launched—a bold, dark mode layout featuring an eye-catching fireworks background.

It’s the perfect festive look for Independence Day events, summer festivals, or any celebration that deserves some extra sparkle.

This theme brings:

  • 🌌 A sleek dark interface that makes photos pop
  • 🎇 A dynamic fireworks background for an instant party vibe
  • 🛍️ The same easy shopping experience with a more celebratory feel

Photographers can enable Pop Rocks from the Custom Offer Creator under Theme Settings—just in time to make your July events feel a little more explosive. 💥

Found via a Custom Offer's Editor

📚 Resources Page Reimagined

The Resources section has been split into five focused pages to remove clutter and confusion:

  • Every button is now better labeled with detailed descriptions so you know exactly what it does and why it matters.

Better clarity = better confidence!

🖼️ New Product Render Creator Tool

Found under Marketing Materials (in the new Resources section), this lets you:

  • Upload a sample image
  • Generate live product previews
  • Download and use those previews for your own promotional content

Perfect for flyers, social posts, or emails. 📣

Upload your own pics, and click the products to download them!

👥 Contact Stats Now More Accurate

Going forward, the system now tracks Participants vs Additional Contacts more accurately in new events. While this doesn’t retroactively change old events, future reports will give you a clearer picture of who engaged with your Event and how.

📝 Full List of Pricing Changes

Here’s the full breakdown of this week’s product/shipping adjustments:

That’s everything for this week!

The BGR improvements and new marketing tools are sure to make your Events feel sharper, simpler, and more sellable than ever.

Until next time,

📣 Candy

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Photographing Homecoming Weekend with NowCandid: A Photographer's Playbook
Events
August 12, 2025

Photographing Homecoming Weekend with NowCandid: A Photographer's Playbook

8
 minutes read
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
August 8, 2025

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

3
 minutes read
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 🍬

Weekly Recap: PhotoCoach Support, Acrylic Puzzles & More! 🧠🧩
Feature Updates
August 1, 2025

Weekly Recap: PhotoCoach Support, Acrylic Puzzles & More! 🧠🧩

4
 minutes read
Hey there, photo friends!

Candy here with some sweet new updates from your NowCandid™ Dashboard.

We've got a powerful new coaching tool, a fun new product to sell, and a bunch of workflow-boosting fixes to round it out.

Let’s dive in! ✨

🆕 New Feature: PhotoCoach

Introducing PhotoCoach—your new secret weapon for improving the quality of your photographers’ photos over time! 🧠📷

With PhotoCoach, you can:

  • • Review images from your Events and flag them with issues like "Acceptable," “Duplicate,” “Exposure Issue,” “Cropping Issue” and more (and make your own categories too!)
  • • Track photographer photo quality over time
  • • Send automatic feedback reports to your photographers with a breakdown of image counts & issue counts

It’s perfect for helping your team take more sellable images—leading to happier clients and stronger sales!

Find it now under Tools & More on your Dashboard and start coaching like a pro. 💪

Note: PhotoCoach is not new for CORE™ users (CORE™ is our sister-software at Candid Color Systems™), but it's new to NowCandid™! And it's had some feature improvements recently so it is now web-based! Woo!

It takes a little getting used to, but once you are, it's super easy and super fun!

🧩 NEW: 8×10 Acrylic-Backed Puzzle

Puzzle fans, rejoice! 🎉 You can now sell a 56-piece acrylic-backed 8×10 puzzle, complete with cute live-rendered previews on the retail site.

Why customers will love it:

  • Unique gift or keepsake
  • Durable acrylic & display-worthy

Even the little detahced pieces in the top right live-render, yay! - Theme: Liquorice

🔗 URL Filtering Just Got Smarter

Now when shoppers apply filters on the retail site, those filters update the URL automatically—making filtered views shareable with friends & family!

Not much more to say about this one, just a cool touch! :)

🛠️ Misc Tweaks & Fixes

A roundup of small but mighty changes:

  • 📥 Dynamic Personal Gallery Downloads can now be purchased by shoppers via Favorites!
    • A great addition for action sports—gives customers a “buy all” option that scales with the number of images selected, even when shopping from an All Gallery.
  • 🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Group-by-Face filter popup now shows only unique faces
    • Applies to new Events only—re-run Group-by-Face on past Events if needed!
  • 🗂 BGR Folders are editable again via the “Edit Folder” option
  • 🖼 Retail site now scrolls past the cover photo if a filter is selected from the initial popup
    • A smoother experience when arriving to an All Images gallery
  • 🧍‍♀️ Selfie Check-In button transforms post-Face Matching
    • It now becomes a second Retail Site button after expiration
  • 🧾 Invoice History tool now displays all past invoices, not just recent ones

That’s everything for this week! 💫

Whether you're giving photo feedback, selling puzzles, or just tidying up your workflow—we’ve got your back.

More soon!
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
  • List Two
  • List Three
  • List Four
  • List Five

This is a link

This is bold text