Before the event
Both of these are one-time. Do them now, at a desk, not on the day.
Connect Stripe
This is how parents pay you. In your studio, go to Payments and press Connect Stripe. If you already have a Stripe account, sign into it and pick it. It won't make you a second one.
The important difference from Waldo: the money goes straight into your account, at the moment the parent pays. It doesn't come to me first and get passed on. Your name is what shows on their card statement, and they are your customer.
Set your prices, then attach them
Go to Packages and add what you sell. A package is a price a parent can buy from inside the gallery, for example "Digital pack, $25". You write it once here and it applies everywhere you attach it, so raising it later is one edit.
Then open the gallery for this event, find the Selling section, and tick the packages you want offered there. That second step is the one people miss, and without it parents can look but not buy.
If a parent needs their money back, do it from Recent sales in your studio. There is a Refund button on the sale itself, and it returns my 7% to you at the same time.
The same refund taken in your Stripe dashboard gives the parent their money back but keeps my 7%, and you would be the one out of pocket. Same money either way if you use the button. Payouts are still Stripe's, and that part has not changed.
Setting up the event
Do this in order. The order is the part that saves you money.
Upload the photos to a gallery and deliver it
Exactly the way you normally would. Nothing new here.
Create the event and point it at that gallery
One event per gallery. Check the name before you confirm, but if you do point it at the wrong one it is fixable: open the event, press Delete event, and build a new one on the right gallery. Your photos are never touched by that.
Find the faces, and let it finish
This reads every photo once. A few hundred takes a few minutes. You can leave the page and it picks up where it left off.
Wait for it to say it is done before you share the sign-up link. A parent who signs up while it is still reading gets matched against only the photos it has reached so far, and their results will look thin for no reason they can see.
Share the sign-up link
Print it on a card at the door, put it in your stories, or text it to the team parents. It is the same link for everyone at the event.
Upload and deliver the gallery before you create the event. Finding the faces costs a fraction of a cent per photo, and if the event points at the wrong gallery you pay for it twice. Cheap either way, just tidier.
And do not put an access word on an event gallery. The family pages work by a private link sent to each parent, and an access word on top of that gets in their way at exactly the wrong moment.
What a family does
They open your link on a phone and fill in a short form. That's the whole thing from their side.
- Their name, email and phone
- The state they live in
- A photo taken right there, through the camera on their phone. The page opens the camera itself, so this one cannot be an old picture from the camera roll
- A headshot, uploaded. The competition headshot is ideal
Both photos are used to find matches and nothing else. Neither is published, shown to other families, or used to train anything, and both are deleted on the same 90-day schedule.
Two reference photos find far more pictures than one, because a phone camera and stage lighting fail in different ways: a shot that will not resolve against a selfie often resolves against a posed headshot, and the reverse for a candid. And left to choose, people hand over the picture they like rather than the face they have today, which is the single biggest cause of a competitor sitting in the unmatched pile.
A blurry one, a side profile, sunglasses, or a photo of a printed photo can all fail to read as a face. Ten seconds of coaching at the door saves a parent going home with nothing.
Most of yours will be. The parent enters their own name and email as the guardian, and Phramed emails them a consent form to sign. Nothing is searched for that child until the guardian has signed it. A buried checkbox is not consent for a minor's face, so this is a real extra step and it is not skippable.
Practically: tell parents to expect an email straight away, and to check spam on the day. A child whose guardian has not signed will not appear in any results, and you will see them in your list as waiting.
Anyone who lives in Illinois cannot use face matching. They get a clear message saying so, and that you can still send their photos directly. This is a state law about biometrics and it isn't something either of us can switch on. Know that before a regional event so you're not surprised at the door.
Reviewing what it found
Nothing reaches a family until you approve it.
Your review queue puts the least certain matches first, because that's where you're needed, and the obvious ones can be approved in a batch. Do it on your phone if it suits you. It is built for standing in a hallway between rounds, not for sitting at a desk.
Rejecting a match takes one tap and the photo simply stays out of that family's set. If you reject something by accident, tell me. I would rather know the queue put a bad match high than have you quietly work around it.
Sending the photos out
One button, and then the money is between you and the parent.
When you are happy, press Send to families. Every family with approved photos gets an email with a link to just theirs. Anyone with nothing approved is skipped, so nobody gets an empty page.
On their page a parent can see their photos, save them, and buy whatever packages you attached. They pay by card, Apple Pay or Link, and it lands in your Stripe account.
A big event is a lot of email at once and it can take a minute to work through them. If the screen tells you some did not send, text me before pressing it again. Sending twice can replace links that already went out, and I would rather sort it in two minutes than have you chase parents whose link stopped working.
What happens to the face data
Parents ask about this one, so here's the flat answer.
Faceprints are deleted 90 days after the event, automatically. Every guardian who signs gets that in writing, so it can't be switched off.
The photographs themselves are unaffected. They are your work and they stay yours. You can also purge an event yourself the moment you are done with it, which is a good habit once the orders have stopped.
A guardian can withdraw at any time. In practice they will reply to the consent email or just ask you at the event, so it comes to you. Open the event, find them in your list, and press Withdraw. It deletes their faceprint and their reference photo straight away.
If you get one and aren't sure, text me and I'll do it while you're still standing there.