Building your first flow

In this tutorial you will build a simple automation flow from scratch — adding photos to a Photos start step, wiring up processing steps, connecting them, and running the flow to see results.

What is a flow?

A flow is a visual pipeline that processes a batch of photos automatically. You wire together steps on a canvas, tell the flow which photos to process, and click Run. Flows are available under the Flows tab in the top navigation (Beta).

Create a flow

Click Flows in the top navigation.
Click New flow. The flow opens in the editor with a single Photos step already on the canvas — this is the start step and cannot be removed.
Type a name for your flow in the name field at the top of the editor (it starts as "Untitled flow").

Add photos to the start step

The Photos start step selected with the config panel open showing uploaded photos and the Add photos button

Click the Photos start step on the canvas to select it. The config panel on the right shows the step's settings.

Click Add photos to pick files from your computer. You can add multiple photos at once. Alternatively, drag image files directly onto the canvas — they are added to the start step automatically.
Each photo appears as a small thumbnail in the panel. To remove a single photo, hover over its thumbnail and click the ✕ button.
To remove all photos at once, click Clear all.

If your photos have per-player data (names, jersey numbers, team), you can attach a Data CSV to the start step. The CSV must have a filename column that matches each photo's filename; the remaining columns become variables ({Player First}, {Player Last}, etc.) that any downstream step can reference. Click Download sample CSV to get a starter file with the right column structure.

Add steps to the canvas

The Steps palette on the left lists every step type you can add. Drag a step from the palette onto the canvas to place it.

Step	What it does
Remove Background	Removes the background from each photo and detects the subject's face.
Text	Extracts or reshapes a CSV field into a new variable using a regex or split rule.
Format Date	Derives a formatted date or week number into a new variable.
Branch	Routes each photo down a different path based on its data fields.
Filter	Continues only the photos that match a condition and drops the rest.
Create Image	Renders a template into a finished image for each photo.
Create Editable Design Only	Creates an editable Studio design for each photo, without rendering an image.
Create Editable Design & Render	Creates an editable Studio design and renders it in one step.
Create Team Photo	Combines all photos in the run into a single team layout design.
Run Flow	Hands each photo to another flow to finish processing.
Call Service	Sends each photo to an external service.
Send To	Dispatches finished images or designs to a destination.

Steps can be copied and pasted on the canvas using Cmd+C / Cmd+V (Mac) or Ctrl+C / Ctrl+V (Windows).

Connect steps

A connection being drawn from the Photos step to a Remove Background step on the flow canvas

Steps communicate through typed connections. Each step has a small handle on its right edge (output) and left edge (input). To connect two steps:

Hover over the output handle of the upstream step until the cursor changes.
Click and drag from the handle to the input handle of the next step.
Release to confirm the connection.

The canvas only allows connections that are compatible. For example, Remove Background outputs a photo, which can flow into Create Image, Create Editable Design Only, or Create Team Photo. A Create Image step outputs a finished render, which can only flow into Send To. Incompatible connections are silently rejected — if you drag to a step that can't accept the connection, nothing happens.

Configure each step

Click any step to select it and open its config panel on the right. What you configure depends on the step type.

Remove Background — optionally enable Color correction to improve skin tones after the background is removed.
Text — choose a source field, pick an operation (Regex extract or Split), enter the pattern, and give the result an output field name. Use the preview box to test with a sample value before running.
Format Date — pick a source field and an output format to derive a formatted date or week number into a new variable.
Branch — set conditions that route each photo down a different path based on its data fields.
Filter — set a condition; only photos that match continue, and the rest are dropped.
Create Image / Create Editable Design Only / Create Editable Design & Render / Create Team Photo — choose a template. Choosing a template opens the same searchable, folder-grouped template picker you use for New Design in Studio, so template selection looks the same in both places. Once a template is selected, text fields appear; fill each with a fixed value or a {variable} from your CSV. Click the { } button inside a field to insert a variable at the cursor position. Photo fields are filled automatically by the pipeline.
Run Flow — choose another flow to hand each photo to for the rest of its processing.
Call Service — choose an external service to send each photo to.
Send To — choose a destination. Presets apply to editable designs; direct integrations (Dropbox, Webhook) apply to rendered images.

Validation warnings before you run

The flow builder checks for problems and blocks the Run button when it finds any. Common issues:

Missing required config — a create step has no template selected, or a Send To step has no destination. The field shows an amber warning in the config panel.
Unfilled text fields — a template's text field has no value or variable. The config panel highlights which fields are empty so the template placeholder won't silently appear in the output.
Cycles — connections cannot loop back to an earlier step. The canvas rejects any connection that would create a cycle.
Unconnected steps — steps that are not reachable from the Photos start step are skipped at run time.

A step with an unfilled required field shows a summary like "No template" or "No destination" beneath its label on the canvas, so you can spot missing config at a glance without opening the panel.

Save your flow

Click Save in the top bar, or press Cmd+S (Mac) / Ctrl+S (Windows). The button shows a pulsing amber dot when there are unsaved changes. The flow can be saved even if some steps are not fully configured — saving only checks the graph structure (node types, connection compatibility, no cycles), not whether every field is filled.

If you try to leave the editor with unsaved changes, a dialog appears with three options: Cancel (stay on the page), Leave (discard changes and leave), or Save & Leave (save then navigate away).

Run your flow

Click Run in the top bar. The flow is saved automatically before starting.
If any required config is missing, an error toast describes the problem — fix it and try again.
Once the run starts, the Run results panel opens on the right. Each step shows a colored status indicator:
- Gray — not started yet
- Blue (pulsing) — in progress
- Green — complete
- Red — failed
- Amber — partially complete (some items failed)
The run processes each photo through every connected step in order. Progress is shown as completed / total next to each step.

Read the results

The Run results panel showing per-step status indicators and Open design links after a completed run

When the run finishes, the Run results panel shows the outcome for each step:

Create Editable Design Only and Create Team Photo steps show Open design links for each created design. Click a link to open the design in Studio.
Create Image steps show a thumbnail of each rendered image. Click a thumbnail to open the full image.
If some items failed, a Retry failed items button appears. Click it to reprocess only the items that did not succeed — photos that already completed are not re-run.

To review a past run, click Runs in the top bar and select a run from the list. The results panel reopens for that run.