The company processes thousands of athletes daily, covering 40 to 50, up to 200 teams per tournament. At one of their largest recent, events, the team photographed 4,000 players within 12 hours. Working from a database of player registration data, the whole workflow—from photography to printing—is managed by a team housed onsite so attendees can purchase photos almost instantly.

Despite a core staff of only eight full-time employees, Glossy Finish scales up to 200 workers during peak summer seasons, including photographers, sales staff, and graphic designers.

Founded in 2006, Glossy Finish’s USP is providing instant gratification to attendees, supplying photos during the event itself. As Matt Winer, Partner & CTO, explains:

A key part of the event is check-in day during which players pass through registration. During this process, they pass through Glossy Finish’s mobile studios to photograph each player individually so every participant is captured. These captures are then used to produce both individual prints and composite team photos.

However, extracting athletes from the studio backgrounds was a time-consuming bottleneck in their process. “Before we started using remove.bg, the process was cumbersome and manual,” says Winer.

With manual, green screen background removal, it could take two people an entire day to process photos for 50 teams—and even then, they were only producing team photos, not individual ones.

Glossy Finish needed a way to streamline and automate much of its workflow without compromising the quality of the final product.

Glossy Finish adopted remove.bg in 2019, starting with pay-as-you-go credits to trial the service. The impact was immediate. remove.bg automated the background removal process, freeing up significant time and labor.

“We could photograph thousands of players in a single day and fully automate the background extraction process,” says Winer. “We no longer needed manual green screens, which were effective but slow.” How did remove.bg fit into the process? In the updated workflow, photos are taken, and the backgrounds are automatically removed using remove.bg. Custom software centers and aligns faces and individual images onto the pre-designed backgrounds featuring tournament logos and location-specific graphics.

For team photos, individual player images are arranged side by side to create a composite, eliminating the need for a traditional group photo. This not only saves time but ensures each player is captured perfectly.

“Our workflow is designed to sell photos as soon as possible,” Winer explains. “If an event starts on Sunday, we arrive by Friday, take check-in photos on Saturday, and begin selling them by Saturday night or Sunday morning.”

With remove.bg fully integrated, Glossy Finish can now complete photo processing in a fraction of the previous time.

“Before automation, it would take two people an entire day to process photos for 50 teams,” says Winer. “For our largest event, where we photograph 4,000 kids in one day, three people used to work late into the night to prepare graphics. Last year, we were able to handle all the graphics and printing with one person.”

This faster turnaround has had a direct impact on sales. “We know that showing customers a photo of their child within seconds of it being taken significantly boosts our chances of making a sale,” says Winer.

One memorable example took place at a Babe Ruth softball tournament, where Glossy Finish displayed real-time player profiles on a 30-foot video wall as athletes walked across the stage. Using remove.bg and custom software, photos were taken, processed, and displayed in under two minutes. The seamless delivery helped make the resulting prints a must-have souvenir for families.

“Our business thrives on speed and efficiency,” Winer adds. “We only have a few days to sell these photos—after the event ends, the window to sell is gone.”

Winer gives remove.bg a 9.3 out of 10 rating, calling it a game-changer for the company’s workflow. “It has revolutionized the way we process photos,” Winer says. “The only improvement I’d suggest is adding eyeglass glare correction to help in situations where reflections interfere with the photos.”

Looking forward, Glossy Finish plans to continue optimizing its workflow by integrating dynamic background generation and exploring other AI tools. “remove.bg will continue to play a crucial role as we grow and take on larger events with more complex requirements,” Winer says.