Read over the instructions below or watch the full-length video located here to Flow your Portraits.
What is Portrait Flow?
Portrait flow describes the process for automatically adding portrait images to your yearbook pages with the names entered for you. The images are organized in alphabetical order on the pages automatically.
1) Send us your Portrait Images
If you used a professional school photographer to take your school photos have them send files to us! This ensures the images get uploaded with names attached to them and enables you to use the Flow Feature.
Tell us how you want them sorted for you- By Grade Level or Homeroom Teacher.
- Portrait links can be forwarded to support@schoolannual.com
- Portrait Files can be sent to us using our File Transfer website schoolannual.wetransfer.com
If you took your own photos, they will need to be tagged with names before they can flow to your pages. Here's a walkthrough video.
If you haven't received your portrait images yet, you will want to contact your photographer and request them. You can continue to Step 3 without them, but cannot complete the Flow process.
2) Plan your Portrait Layout
Before you create your portrait layouts, think about how you will want them organized in the yearbook. Do you want them organized by Homeroom Teacher, Grade Level, or all combined together?
This will determine how you organize the portraits in the Image Library (Create > Image Library). For example, if you plan on flowing your portraits by grade level make sure the portraits are in folders by grade in the Image Library. Images can be moved between folders in the image library at your discretion. Just drag and drop them!
- Ensure your student names are spelled correctly (Double-Click the portrait and then click the 'pencil' tool next to the tagged name to edit it)
- Delete any duplicate portraits, or remove any unneeded portraits.
-Specify your Teacher Portraits if you want them to flow first on the page (double-click on the portrait in the Image Library, and then open the 'Details' tab. Use the 'Type' drop-down to specify the image as a Teacher, Assistant, Other or Student). This will determine the order they flow, bypassing Alphabetical order.
- Add No Photo Available (Placeholder image) for any student who did not take a photo so they will flow with the class.
https://support.schoolannual.com/hc/en-us/articles/1500005990581-No-Photo-Available-Placeholder
3) Creating your Portrait Page Layout
Now that your images have been uploaded and sorted correctly, it's time to plan your portrait page layouts. You'll want to add a Flow Element to your portrait pages.
From the Page Designer (Create > Page Designer) navigate to the Designs tab. Within the Designs tab, use the Drop-down menu to browse through the categories of Templates. Expand the Portrait section by clicking the arrow. Within the Portrait section, you can view all the different types of portrait templates.
Drag and drop any of these portrait templates to your yearbook pages. Experiment by choosing different options until you've found the one you like.
You can also import a basic portrait layout (and customize it later) from the Art tab in Page Designer or from the Flow tab. Drag and drop the layout to your page to use it.
4) Customizing your Portrait Page Layout
Once you have your Flow Element placed on your portrait page, you can customize it to your liking!
Single-Click your Flow Element so that you can see the blue dotted lines around it. Then the editing menu will appear.
This menu at the top is called the 'Contextual Menu' because it's in the context of whatever you have currently selected. You will only be able to edit the flow element if you have it selected.
From this menu you can customize the following:
- Font, Font Size, Font Color, Font Effects (bold, italics, all caps, etc)
- Text Color and Text Stroke (the border around the text)
- Border around photo boxes (stroke)
You can customize the size of the portrait boxes and the number of portrait boxes from the Flow Options menu in this toolbar (Flow Options looks like a 3x3 grid of squares)
From the Flow Options menu you can customize the following:
- Automatic - If this box is checked, then the flow element will automatically resize to fill the page. If you want other content on the page (titles, candids, etc) uncheck the Automatic box.
- Number of Rows and Columns
- Width and Height of the portrait boxes
- Horizontal and Vertical spacing between the boxes
- Portrait Shape allows you to change the shape of your portrait boxes
- Rounded Corners allow you to round the corners of the portrait boxes
- Name Options (Where the textboxes for names go, either the left, right, above, or below)
- Expand Flow covered in Step 6. This allows you to individually edit each box, but no longer allows you to reset or reflow the portraits.
Use the Up and Down arrows to adjust the sizes, or type in your own values to make fine-tune adjustments. For example, changing the Width of the portrait from 8p3 to 8p2 will be a very small reduction in Width, but changing it from 8p3 to 7p3 will be a much larger change.
You can also add or remove individual portrait boxes from your Flow Element. To do this, Double-Click on the Flow Element. This will bring up the Visibility Menu.
The Visibility menu allows you to show or hide specific portrait boxes. Use this menu to further customize your flow.
Adding multiple classes to one page
If you have multiple classes per page you wish to flow, you can do that as well!
Create an individual Flow Element for each class, and then lock the Flow Element you do not wish to flow into.
To lock a flow element, select it and then press the Lock button in the upper right of the contextual menu.
If you've done this correctly you will see one flow element with a red border around it. This means it's locked and nothing will flow into it.
In the above screenshot, the top Flow Element (First 8 boxes) is locked, so when the flow is done images will flow into the second Flow Element (bottom 8 boxes) only.
5) Flowing the Portraits
To Flow, your portrait images, open the Flow tab in Page Designer.
Customize the following:
- Category drop-down menu is the folder you wish to flow. These are your portrait folders in the Image Library, so make sure you have them organized how you'd like them.
- Name Format drop-down menu is used to format your names on the page. Do you want them First Last, Last First, or even First Middle Last?
- Start and Stop page determines where your flow starts and stops. If you wish to flow to one page only, specify just that page (i.e. start 5 stop 5). If you wish to flow to several pages, specify the full range (i.e. start 5 stop 10). This is how you can choose to flow to a left page or a right page only.
To start your flow click the Flow button!
(If the flow button is grayed out, then the class may already have flowed to a different page. In that case, press 'Reset' to reset the flow and reflow it)
Your images should now flow to your yearbook page! Here is an example. Notice they are still in one large group. At this point, you could Reset the flow if you wanted to make edits (add students, change text size/formatting, etc).
You can now double-click on the flow element to open the Cropping Menu and crop the view of your portraits. Click the crop symbol next to any portrait you wish to crop.
6) Expanding the Flow
Once your portraits have flowed and your class is completely finalized (no new students coming, no name changes needed) you can expand your flow to customize each portrait individually.
NOTE: Expanding the flow will break apart your Flow Element and you will be unable to reset the flow after this point. It's critical that you have your roster finalized before you start this step.
Only users with Adviser level access can expand the flow.
To Expand your flow, select your flow element with the portraits already flowed in, and open the Flow Options menu. You will now have the option to Expand the Flow (after you check the checkbox).
Once the flow is expanded, your portrait boxes and name boxes can be moved around individually. Notice how only one image is selected in the screenshot below.
After expanding the flow you can customize the portraits further!
- Select the Portraits you wish to customize (click them, or click and drag across several of them)
- Open to the Formatting and Effects menu with the portraits selected.
- From this menu, you can change your rectangular portrait boxes into circular portrait boxes (use the Rounded Corner option)
- Add a Tint, Transparency, Glow, or Drop-Shadow to your portrait images.
If you mistakenly Expanded your Flow Element and need to revert it back to before you flowed, you can use the History tab and drag and drop an older version of the page (from before you expanded).
