You may already know PhotoDay is an all-in-one marketplace for volume photographers—but what does that really mean? Our innovative platform and wide range of features and tools can help photographers thrive in any market.
We know it can feel overwhelming to dive in, especially for school photographers dealing with subject data, checking in students on-site, and ensuring privacy in an online world.
Let us show you how PhotoDay’s transformative solutions work together to cure all your school picture day headaches. Consider this ultimate school photography guide a quick rundown of what PhotoDay can do for you!
Private Galleries in PhotoDay
Private galleries are the backbone of photographing and delivering a school photo job in PhotoDay. Our modern online galleries are mobile-friendly, lightning-fast, and (most importantly) make picking and ordering products fun and easy for customers.
With the private gallery workflow, you can offer each subject an exclusive gallery showcasing only their photos. We’ll go into more detail about each step later, but here’s how it works:
Create a job in PhotoDay, then add subject data—either before or on-site at picture day. Subject data can include anything from just first and last names to grades, student IDs, teachers, email addresses, etc.
Use the free PhotoDay Capture mobile app to snap reference photos of each subject. You (or a volunteer) can take reference photos before, during, or even after you take the professional photos.
Let our facial recognition technology, FaceFind, work its matching magic. Capture syncs the reference photos and data to the PhotoDay Studio Panel, so all you have to do is upload your professional images and watch FaceFind match each photo to the right person.
Publish the gallery. Each subject will have secure access to only their photos! PhotoDay makes promotion easy with automated and manual marketing tools.
It really is that simple!
Prepping for Picture Day
We all know that good preparation is vital to a stress-free school picture day. With all the moving parts—students, staff, photographers, check-in—to juggle, PhotoDay is dedicated to making your job easier with tools to set you up for success before you ever pick up the camera.
Incentivize with AdvancePay and Special Offers
Example of an automated text message promoting an AdvancePay offer.
With AdvancePay (one of our most popular features), you can create order urgency before taking a single photo. AdvancePay is PhotoDay’s answer to traditional pre-pay and allows your customers to purchase credits before picture day, which they can then use when the gallery is published.
We make it easy to include an incentivizing offer like “Get 10% off when you spend $50” for everyone who purchases an AdvancePay credit. This encourages customers to pre-pay and ensures a minimum order amount. Check out Boost Your AOV with AdvancePay and A Photographer’s Guide to Offers & Promotions to learn more.
Stay Organized with Organization Pages
One of our newer features, Organization Pages, allows you to set up and share a single link to all your galleries related to a school.
Example Organization Page with various galleries and your studio information.
Instead of keeping track of multiple gallery access codes, you can share one link to act as a convenient landing page. Learn more about Organization Pages.
Paired with Gallery Lookup, you’ll never have to worry about tracking down multiple access codes for your clients again!
Gallery Lookup: Easy and Secure
When using PhotoDay’s private galleries, a photographer’s most significant pain point is: “What if the school won’t share parent email addresses?” So, we created Gallery Lookup to solve this obstacle without sacrificing privacy.
You control the fields customers use to look up their private gallery.
With Gallery Lookup, customers can find their private galleries without an access code—all they need is a link to the Organization Page or the Job URL. You can rest easy knowing every parent can find their child’s gallery, even if they never received a unique access code beforehand. Get to know Gallery Lookup.
Subject Data Made Simple
Subject data helps match student information to photos (reference and professional) within PhotoDay Capture and private galleries. This data usually takes the form of a CSV file from the school containing basic information, such as names, student IDs, grades, email addresses, and more—or less, depending on what your school provides.
You can upload subject data to the PhotoDay Studio Panel and watch it sync seamlessly to Capture on your mobile device. You can add and edit this data at any point in the process!
Increase Sales with Enticing Price Sheets
Create your price sheet (left) for customers to shop in their gallery storefront (right).
When moving your business online, so many factors change, including the mindset of our customers. Today’s parents love the convenience of being able to buy what they want when they want. Now, they first fall in love with your high-quality photos, then choose which prints, products, and downloads to purchase.
Say goodbye to manual matching! PhotoDay Capture creates a frictionless, contactless workflow that allows you to focus on the subject you’re photographing rather than getting bogged down by tethers and codes.
Using Capture and PhotoDay enables you to create private galleries of individuals by automatically matching subject data with professional photos using our facial clustering technology, FaceFind.
PhotoDay Capture's check-in process is quick, easy, and user-friendly.
The best part? It requires no additional equipment—just download the app to your phone or tablet. Learn about Capture and how our groundbreaking technology will transform your school picture days.
After Picture Day Flow
Once you and your gear are recharging back at your studio or home, it’s time to import, edit, and upload your photos!
Streamlined Post-Processing
Did you know PhotoDay offers intuitive, AI-powered post-processing services? Photographers can upload photos, remove backgrounds, color correct, and start selling all in one place without ever leaving the PhotoDay Studio Panel!
PhotoDay Knockouts can extract from any type of background—natural or traditional.
Knockouts, our extraction service, can remove all background types—natural or traditional green, gray, white, etc.—so no matter your backdrop, you can offer digital backgrounds for your customers. In the world of online selling, your photos are your inventory, so the more you have to offer, the more you can make!
Using PhotoDay Color Correction is like an editing easy button.
Our color correction service goes beyond the basics by intelligently adjusting exposure, contrast, white balance, saturation, and even gamma to deliver a professional look for every image.
All PhotoDay post-processing jobs are completed in a matter of minutes, so your workflow can keep rolling smoothly. Plus, you don’t have to publish a job in PhotoDay to use these powerful services. Learn more and try them out!
Uploading Photos & Matching Data
When edits are finalized, just upload the finished photos to your job, sit back, relax, and watch FaceFind work its matching magic.
FaceFind is wildly accurate at matching the right face to the correct data. We've tested it on individuals, buddy poses, group photos, profile views, sunglasses, and face masks—it can even differentiate between twins! And if it ever misses the mark, it’s incredibly easy to manually resolve any issues. You’ll be ready to publish in no time!
Effortless Automated Marketing
We love automated communication here at PhotoDay! Whether you encourage text opt-ins, import email addresses, or directly link customers to the gallery or organization page, PhotoDay makes it easy for customers to subscribe to gallery notifications.
When you publish a gallery, our strategically timed text and email reminder campaigns start spreading the word to everyone who subscribed to the gallery!
From emails to texts, our marketing features are designed to engage customers with their galleries.
The key to engaged customers and high order counts is clear, effective communication. And we have a lot of tools to help you do just that. From automated text and email series to manual marketing flyers, custom SMS promos, gallery offers, and more. Learn about our wide range of marketing features and get ready to watch the additional revenue roll in!
Yearbook Selection: Simplified
Have you ever wished your customers could pick their yearbook photos without leaving the gallery? PhotoDay’s Yearbook Selection feature simplifies the photo selection workflow for photographers, organizations, and customers alike.
Example of the Yearbook Selection flow in a customer gallery.
Thanks to built-in integration with customer galleries and automated marketing, you can easily set up, communicate, review, and export customer yearbook selections all within PhotoDay. Plus, more galleries accessed means more photos viewed and more orders placed. See how yearbook selection works.
Export Your Data On Demand
Another less flashy but extremely useful feature of private galleries is the ability to export your gallery data in various formats, including Yearbook (PSPA), School Admin Software (SPOA), Subject Data, Service Item, and Compositing Data. You can control a variety of settings, filters, featured photo settings, and AutoCrop to keep the school delighted and your life easier!
Stay Updated with Insights & Reports
Wouldn't you love to know which customers texted in an access code, which ones have purchased...and which ones haven't? Within each job, you'll find an Insights tab that you can use to get up-to-the-minute customer and sales info for that job.
PhotoDay also offers extensive order tracking and detailed reporting so you can know which product, package, jobs, and more are selling best!
Hassle-free Order Delivery
Last but not least, when a customer buys prints, products, and downloads from their gallery, PhotoDay handles everything for you.
Check out the flow:
The customer picks their favorite poses, customizes products, sees a live preview, and checks out—all within the gallery storefront.
The lab fulfills and ships the order directly to your customer’s doorstep.
With direct-to-consumer drop shipping (available for all PhotoDay gallery types), customers can enjoy their photos even faster, and you can say goodbye to manual fulfillment, lab bills, order minimums, and distributing photos on-site.
Customers automatically receive helpful order updates.
Additionally, if you’re using private galleries with Miller’s Professional Imaging as your lab, you can offer free bulk shipping. Bulk shipping in PhotoDay allows you to specify one shipping destination for all orders tied to a job to be shipped together—completely free and overnight. Learn more about bulk shipping in PhotoDay.
Like we said, PhotoDay has a ton to offer! We’re fully committed to helping photographers modernize and simplify their workflow—so work can feel less like work and more like what you love.
Choose PhotoDay for your next school picture day to save valuable time while increasing your customer satisfaction and sales!
If you’re wondering, “How do I get started?” just sign up for a free account! Our customer success team is here to help every step of the way with live chat, 1:1 demo calls, and easy-to-use guides and resources.
Explore what else PhotoDay can do for your business:
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