GotPhoto workflow guide
Class composites from your GotPhoto export,
start to finish.
GotPhoto hands you a zip of portraits, sorted into class folders or listed in an index file. Here is exactly what to do with it: what to export, what ClassPhoto reads from it, how proofs work, and how to fix a name or a late retake without starting the class over.
Step one
What you export from GotPhoto.
GotPhoto can hand you the job's photos as a zip sorted into class folders (grade and teacher folders such as 01_Mrs_Smith), with or without a Student_data.csv, and it can run the export its help centre calls "Run a Student Data Export (PSPA)". PSPA, in GotPhoto's own words, is the export type most commonly used in North America: images at 640 by 800 or 1280 by 1600 pixels, plus a text file it calls the Index File, with an optional CSV alongside it. ClassPhoto reads both shapes.
The photo that comes out for each student is the index photo, the one GotPhoto marked as their main image, not a group shot: GotPhoto does not include group photos in a student data export, only one individual photo per subject. If you want staff members carried in the export too, their row in GotPhoto's names list needs "Staff" or "Teacher" written in the Group column.
You do not need to unzip anything first. Drop the zip GotPhoto gives you straight into ClassPhoto, folders and all.
Step two
What ClassPhoto does with it.
ClassPhoto opens the zip and builds one composite per class automatically. When a PSPA Index.txt is in the export, each photo's class comes from the index itself (its teacher or home room column), so the folders do not have to be tidy. Without an index, the class folders define the classes. Names, grades and teachers come from the Student_data.csv or Index.txt when one is there, spelled the way the school spells them; otherwise from the folder and file names.
Either way, the import report tells you what needs a look before you print: a child listed in the roster with no matching photo, a photo the roster does not recognize, a HEIC or TIFF file the browser cannot open, or a corrupt file it could not read. Two students who happen to share a name are never quietly merged into one, and a leading zero in a student ID is kept exactly as the export wrote it.
Don't forget it
The whole-school composite.
Alongside the class-by-class composites, ClassPhoto builds one composite with every student and every staff member in the school on a single page: the piece that ends up in the lobby frame or the yearbook endpaper. The app's own setup screen recommends a 16 by 20 inch page for a school of roughly 150 to 220 students, and offers panoramic sizes (14 by 8, 18 by 8 and 24 by 8 inches) for a longer roster.
Before it ships
Proofs first, then print.
One export gives you both: a PDF you can email the front office for a name check, and 300 DPI JPEGs sized for your lab, together in one download named for the school and year, ClassComposite_<School>_<Year>.zip. Fix whatever the office finds on the layout and export again.
When something changes
Fixing a name, a transfer, a late retake.
A misspelled name, a student who transferred mid-year, a retake that lands after everyone else's photo is already in: none of it means starting over. You edit the name directly on the layout, remove that student, add a new photo, or swap one out, and the composite re-flows. There is no renaming files and re-importing the whole class.
Picking a tool
QuickComposite, QComposite, or ClassPhoto?
GotPhoto offers two tools of its own before you look anywhere else. QuickComposite is GotPhoto's free, built-in option for a basic layout. QComposite is GotPhoto's paid desktop add-on, $149 a year, with a full layer editor that exports student data and imports the finished composite back into GotPhoto's own shop flow; because it reads names from file names, a correction usually means renaming a file and running the import again.
ClassPhoto is a third, independent option: $89 a year, in the browser, with corrections handled on the layout instead of through a re-import. The full QComposite comparison goes through it feature by feature, and the comparison hub lines up every class composite tool we could find, not only GotPhoto's own two.
See it work
Try it on last year's export.
The fastest way to see whether this fits your workflow is to run it on a job you already finished. Open the sample mode and drop in last year's GotPhoto zip: it builds up to two classes with a SAMPLE watermark, no account and no email required.
FAQ
GotPhoto workflow questions.
Does ClassPhoto need the Student_data.csv?
No. Names, grades and teachers can come from the folder and file names instead. When the CSV or Index.txt is there, it adds the roster's own spelling, plus grades and teachers that file names alone would not carry.
What if my export has no class folders?
If the zip carries a PSPA Index.txt, ClassPhoto takes each child\'s class from the index, so class folders are not needed. Loose photos with only names in the file names land on a single page. Send us a sample through the contact form and we will tell you honestly what it will do.
Can the school see the composites before printing?
Yes. Export the batch as PDF proofs and email them to the office for a name check before anything goes to the lab.
Where do the photos go?
Nowhere but your own computer. The zip is unpacked there, the composites are drawn there, and the finished files save there. See Privacy for schools for what a school's IT department would want to know.
More questions are answered in the main FAQ, or write to us and a real person will answer.