Shoots Help

What Are Shoots?

A job is composed of many shoots of individual people. You can think of a shoot as being synonymous with a “participant” or “subject” that you photograph. You can see all the shoots within a job by navigating to a job and scrolling to the bottom of the page where it says "Shoots".

How To Add Shoots

Shoots are added to the system in three possible ways:

When a participant signs up via the Sign Up form.
When a participant schedules an appointment up via the Booking form.
When imported via the Shoot Import CSV functionality. - CSV Upload Template. You can learn more about how to import a CSV file of shoots/participants here.

Regardless of how a shoot is added to a job, Headshot Tools will automatically create an individual gallery for each participant every time.

How To Edit Shoots

To edit a shoot, first click the participant's name in the Shoots panel of the Job Detail page. This will take you to the "Shoot Detail" page where you can see all the specific information for this Shoot.

At the top of the page, you'll find a gold "Edit Shoot" button. Upon clicking the "Edit Shoot" button, you'll be able to edit this shoot's Email Address, their Viewed Gallery flag, shoot notes, or shoot overrides. For more information on these fields, see the below sections.

PLEASE NOTE: It is not possible to edit a participant's name. This is because the participant's name flows through not only the system but also all your local image filenames (RAW and JPG). If you need to correct a participant's name, the best way to do this is to sign them up again, manually rename all their images, and upload them so everything (locally and remotely) is in sync!

How To Delete Shoots

To delete a shoot, first click the participant's name in the Shoots panel of the Job Detail page. This will take you to the "Shoot Detail" page where you can see all the specific information for this Shoot.

In the Actions panel, you'll find a button titled "Delete Shoot". Clicking this button will permanently delete this shoot, its gallery, and all associated information, files, selections, and purchases from this job. It will be as if this Shoot / Participant never existed. In order for this button to work, you will need to ensure that no file checkboxes are checked.

Please note that this operation is not reversible, and there is nothing you or Headshot Tools support can do to revive this shoot after it is deleted.

How To View Shoot Information

To view details about a specific shoot:

Navigate to the jobs list and click your job’s name.
Look towards the bottom of the page for the "Shoots" panel.
Click your participant's name in the list to see their "Shoot Detail" page.
This shoots list does not auto refresh. If you're not seeing a participant you expect to within this list, please refresh the page.

The shoot detail page contains the following fields:

Name – The first and last name of the shoot participant. This field is not editable.
- The icon beside the participant's name indicates that this participant has opted out of receiving emails.
- The icon beside the participant's name indicates that this participant has a shoot override applied.
Email – The email address of the shoot participant. This field is editable.
File Prefix – Headshot Tools uses this field to match your image files to specifically this shoot. In order for Headshot Tools to perform this matching, you must ensure that your image file names begin with this file prefix. For example:
If the File Prefix was: Smith_John_123-
Your file names for this shoot would look something like this:
- Smith_John_123-0001.jpg
- Smith_John_123-0002.jpg
- Smith_John_123-0003-Retouched.jpg
- See more about file prefixes here.
- See more about file naming here.
Please do not attempt to guess or manually type these file prefixes! Always copy and paste from Headshot Tools! It is absolutely crucial that they are correct or the system is unable to match your files.
Wait Time – This is the amount of time from when the participant signed up to when they were double-clicked in the Dashboard’s Queue interface.
NOTE: This number may be inaccurate if a participant comes back for additional photos and you restore their name back to the queue then double-click them. Double-click the participant's name in the Recent Tab instead of restoring for the most reliable stats.
Shoot Time – This is the amount of time it took from the point that the participant was double-clicked in the Dashboard’s Queue interface to the time their first image was received by Headshot Tools.
NOTE: This number may be inaccurate if you modified your watermarking settings or deleted and re-uploaded images for a participant.
Sent Count – The number of times this shoot has been emailed.
NOTE: The system restricts sending more than 5 emails per shoot. Headshot Tools functions as a transactional email service (similar to sending a purchase receipt). Continuous messaging to participants is not legally supported. To send additional emails to your participant please use a dedicated email marketing platform.
Fail Count – The number of times this shoot was attempted to be emailed but the email could not be sent. This usually only occurs when the provided email is invalid or typed incorrectly.
NOTE: Headshot Tools will not attempt to send any more emails after 3 failed attempts.
Status – Based on various data points in the participant's shoot, Headshot Tools will summarize a status for where this participant is in the process. To learn about each status, see our "How Do The Shoot Statuses Work?" page.
Viewed Gallery – Displays "Yes" if the participant visited their individual gallery. This will only trigger when the gallery contains images. If a participant visits the gallery and no images have been uploaded, the viewed setting will remain at “No” – Not Viewed.
NOTE: It is possible that you might visit a user’s gallery to review it. In this case, your visit to their gallery will trigger the gallery as viewed. To reset this status, click the “Edit Shoot” button and change “Viewed Gallery” to “No”.
Notes – Only displays when this participant has shoot notes. This section contains any photographer entered notes about this participant. Helpful for job inquiry follow-ups, retouching notes, VIP identification and more!
Booking – Only displays when this participant has a booked time slot via Headshot Tools Scheduling. This section contains their booking information and the participant's private booking URL where they can review and cancel their appointment.

Files – This listing shows you all the files that are currently associated with this shoot.

Image – A link and thumbnail view of the low resolution headshot file. You may see a missing thumbnail icon. See how to fix it here.
Name – The name of the file associated with this shoot.

Status – Indicates operations that took place on this image via the below icons:

Icon	Description
	A gold star will appear when Headshot Tools detects a Retouched file. This occurs when the file name ends with “-Retouched.<file extension>”. For example: Smith_John_123-0001-Retouched.jpg
	A red heart will appear when the participant has selected this file as one they want retouched.
	A green cart will appear when the participant has individually purchased retouching for this file.
	A gold cart will appear when the participant has purchased this image as part of buying retouching on the entire gallery.
	A green cart with a down arrow will appear when the participant has individually purchased downloading of this file.
	A gold cart with a down arrow will appear when the participant has purchased this file as part of buying downloads on the entire gallery.
	A blue cloud with a down arrow will appear when the participant has picked this image as a download choice.

Size – The size of the associated file in bytes.
Last Modified – The date and time when the file was last uploaded to Headshot Tools.
Delete - – Place a check in this column then click the red trash can icon to delete any other checked files. Clicking the gray trash can with no files checked will select all the files.

How To Work With Shoots

To navigate to a specific Shoot / Participant:

Navigate to the jobs list and click your job’s name.
Look towards the bottom of the page for the "Shoots" panel.
Click your participant's name in the list to see their "Shoot Detail" page.
This shoots list does not auto refresh. If you're not seeing a participant you expect to within this list, please refresh the page.

The following actions can be performed on shoots by clicking the corresponding button:

Edit Shoot - Edit information about the shoot. This form is currently limited to the Email, Viewed Gallery, shoot notes and also shoot overrides.
Gallery URL - Use the copy button beside this textbox to easily paste your participant's individual gallery URL in an email or text message.
Send Gallery Email – Use this button to immediately send this participant an email with a link to their gallery of images. Perfect for situations where a participant deleted their gallery email or you modified the participant's email and need to send again.

This button has the potential to be disabled. To see why it is disabled, hover your mouse over the button. Possible reasons include:
- The shoot has not been double-clicked in the Dashboard’s Queue yet.
  - To fix this, simply double-click this participant in the Dashboard's queue, refresh the shoot detail page, and try again.
- The shoot has been emailed 5 or more times.
  - We recommend sending this participant an email manually via your business email if you need to send them a new link or add them as a new participant.
- The shoot has failed emailing 3 times.
  - We recommend sending this participant an email manually via your business email if you need to send them a new link or add them as a new participant.
- The participant opted out of emails.
  - We do not recommend attempting to contact this participant in any way.
You can see more about emails here.
Delete Shoot – Allows you to entirely delete the participant and all their data/files from the job. No file checkboxes can be checked when using this button.
View Gallery – This allows you to see the user's gallery as they see it when delivered via email.
NOTE: Visiting a shoot's gallery will trigger the gallery as viewed. To reset this status, click the “Edit Shoot” button and change “Viewed Gallery” to “No”.
View Job – Takes you back to the job that this shoot belongs to.
Upload Files – See How To Upload Files

You might also be interested in how to handle a re-shoot.