Is Anyone Using Sytist For Proofing School Pictures?

I have requests to offer proofing for school photos in the next school year.

We shoot green screen, would cropping and extracting ALL the images be part of the process?

Would I have to password protect each student?

I'd love to hear from anyone who has experience.

Thanks

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Hi Richard,

While we do not shoot schools in the way you likely do - we do large volume work shooting school balls (proms) and graduation ceremonies. Unfortunately, we can not use this software because of limitations on order exporting. You will need to export order 1 at a time and the layout is not conducive to being easily read if you then need to manually enter it into a collating database.

If you, like us, are doing a lot of print orders and need to send files to a lab, or even if you self fulfil / print as we do, then this may be an issue for you as there is no easy way to get all order data from a specific event, in a specific time frame, out of Sytist.

We do have a cart that can do this, and the resultant CSV file is imported into a Filemaker database and the different sizes and numbers of copies are then sorted into appropriately named folders. Our cart is old and needs replacing, though, and I would love to use Sytist for this it is a fantastic cart otherwise, but Tim has made very clear that such a feature is not on his development roadmap. I do not understand this because 1) manipulating user order data is at the heart of what a cart needs to be able to do and 2) There is existing CSV export ability which from what I can see would really only require a change to the layout and possibly a few extra fields added to the output. :-(

I see a new version dropped today, and eagerly read the new features, hoping against hope that maybe this would be the time... but no.

Anyway, maybe this won't affect you, but I thought it was worth pointing out.

Cheers,

Craig

Edited Tue May 03, 22 11:55 PM by Craig Stewart

Yes, we use sytist greenscreen very successfully as a school photography company, as do others.

You need to make a decision on your gallery software based on current abilities, and for us, sytist fulfils just about everything we need.

Cropping and extracting?

Do you mean cropping images and then extracting the green background leaving alpha channels .pngs? No, you do this yourself prior to uploading your extracted .pngs to your sytist server. There are plenty of desktop software solutions that do this with excellent results.

Password protect?

Likely, as that is the standard now. Parents should only be able to see images of their own children, nobody elses. Especially in Europe where I am based. How you automate identifying the subjects in each image is also up to you - sytist doesn't qr code scan like some online solutions do. There are a few topics on this subject, including the foolography scanning system which can 'integrate' with sytist via the metadata foolography entagged writes.

You can view https://www.picturespro.com/sytist-manual/articles/green-screen/ which outlines its capabilities and https://www.picturespro.com/sytist-manual/articles/school-photography-features/ and https://www.picturespro.com/sytist/school-photography-sales-proofing/ for school features; do a search in this forum for green or school to see plenty of topics.

If you have more specific questions, ask.

Edited Wed May 04, 22 3:56 AM by Trailboy

Thanks for your responses, but they don't quite answer my question.

Craig...I understand your desire to export orders, I'd like that too...but mt question is about proofing.

Trailboy...I already use greenscreen galleries, so I'm familiar with the process...I just haven't used it for proofing.

My question is about proofing school photos.

Is it done in a standard gallery or project proofing?

If I have three images of each student, how would I handle the process.

I believe I would need a separate password for each student...but how do I link one password to three photos?

Would I extract and upload three png files...or proof on green screen?

I would think parents would like to preview their chosen pictures on the different backgrounds?

I know using my lab's website would be easier, but I'd like more control of my costs.

Thanks

Edited by

Hi Richard,

Oh, I understand what you are asking about, I was just pointing out something that could be problematic for you that you might have missed if you are focussing on the green screen element. If you do not do a lot of print orders, then it may not be an issue for you, but we do huge volume printing and there is no way we can use this software because of this omission in the exporting capability, I thought that you may be in the same position.

I am sure Tim will drop in and answer your green screen questions thoroughly

Edited Thu May 05, 22 12:21 AM by Craig Stewart

The answers you seek are to be found in the three links to the manual pages I gave earlier.

See the demo greenscreen gallery for a sample at https://www.sytist.net/clients/green-screen-example/

Standard gallery

Extract green and upload.

Passcode photos.

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