Let's talk photo booth software! Our monthly catalog of whats going on in the photo booth software world. Welcome to the April edition which finds us at the beginning of the largest season for photo booth rentals, that time where the spring thaw, beautiful flowers and proms meet. This is a great time of the year for Photo Booth Operators. Not surprising many photo booth software companies are putting the final tweaks on their latest versions of software. In recent weeks we saw releases from many of the major players in the industry including Breeze Systems, Photo Booth Solutions, Sparkbooth and Allen Christopher.
Its always exciting to see what new has come out and how the game of cat and mouse is playing out. So let's see what these companies have been up too!
Breeze DSLR Remote Pro
Breeze has release beta 1 of their new version of DSLR Remote Pro and it finally is looking more Photo Booth focused. With this release it will officially join the ranks of other newer photo booth applications with a print layout editor. It’s been surprising how long this has taken, but it looks like it is finally here. They’ve also added photo booth shortcuts, QR codes, session thumbnails to the screen, a “pop art” creative filter along with a list of other improvements.
The beta is a time limited release which will run until the end of May. Breeze states that the full release will be available during the month of May.
The new print layout editor provides a simple way to quickly edit photo booth print layouts. Simply use the mouse to move, resize and rotate photos and captions directly in the print preview display. Alternatively keyboard shortcuts can be used for precise control. The editor comes complete with undo/redo, the importing of background and overlay images, editing of photo and caption positions, sizes and rotation, QR codes and the importing and exporting of complete print layouts for easy archiving and sharing.
In addition to the layout editor you now have a number of short cut buttons for the photo booth mode of DSLR Remote Pro. These include:
- Printer setup
- Photo booth setup wizard
- Print layout
- Advanced settings
- Start photo booth
The addition of QR codes that can be placed on prints and the “pop art” creative filter should make a few happy but we suspect that the majority of users will never utilize them.
They also increased the number of supported photo booth profiles from 8 to 18 (a strange number, why not 20?). The number of captions have also been increased from 2 to 8.
This look to be a solid release for Breeze and should help them retain many of their users.
Check DSLR Remote Pro 3 Beta 1 at http://www.breezesys.com/downloads/dslrp300beta1.exe
Sparkbooth 4 & DSLR Beta
John and team at Sparkbooth continue to perfect their offering with updates to Sparkbooth 4 and their DSLR beta. The latest release of Sparkbooth included quite a list of changes. Most notable from our perspective were the new photo effects (they too have a “pop art” filter along with a new comic effect) and the ability to sort your overlays by favorites. Nice for quick reuse.
The full list of changes includes:
- Print, session, upload counters with actions
- Add pop art and comic book photo effect
- Start session with presentation remote
- Send It Later queue filters based on selected uploader
- Sent It Later now separate tab in Photo Kiosk
- Send It Later SMS more accessible in Photo Kiosk
- Submit emails to mailing list (MailChimp) from Send It Later
- Added new stand in screen overlays
- Ding sound plays on reprint
- Sort screen overlays by favorites
- About status includes Send to Account, Send to Guest, and Send Photo Later
- Hide buttons if no text is set
- Fix on screen keyboard issues with Pinterest
- Fix camera setting import
- Fix session freezing due to camera error
- Add enable mailing list setting so you can disable mailing list submission without logging out of MailChimp
- Facebook uploader should check for Create Content permission for page
- [DSLR] Detect DSLR settings for better warnings
- [DSLR] Fix disabling sound effect when shooting with DSLR
Check out Sparkbooth at http://sparkbooth.com/download/
Social Booth
Photo Booth Solutions has continued to roll out a slew of great features to their Social Booth offering. It has become a very solid choice and continues to gain in market share. They recently released V2 Beta which continues to build on what we saw in V2 Preview.
The latest version of Social Booth supports Canon DSLR, Canon Powershot & Webcam all in one program. Of course this software is social and users can use the software to share photos via email, Facebook, Twitter, SMS, Pinterest, Smugmug & FTP. Not too shabby.
Other highlights include:
- Made Event Management a lot easier
- Added External Flash Mode to increase Live View Exposure for low light situations
- Added ability to save photos to SD card
- Added Profiles via “Layout Selection” screen. You can now define hotspots on a screen to switch between templates, allowing the user to select strips or single shot.
- Added ability to have multiple “Capture” & “Review” screens and Audio.
- Reworked Template selection screens for greater ease of use
- Added A LOT more layout templates
- Added ability to select which filters are used
- Added Client Twitter
- Added Pinterest
- Added Multiple Choice questions to Surveys
Check Social Booth at https://www.photoboothsolutions.com/socialbooth/
SnapShot Studio
Allen Christopher’s SnapShot Studio version 1.6 was just released late last week and has a number of improvements and add-ons most notable of which is over 60 templates to get you started and Auto-focus fail-safe. Other improvements include UI enhancements, several bug fixes, EOS Rebel t5 support and AF fail-safe.
So what is this auto-focus fail-safe? For Canon users who use Auto focus, they've added up to four re-take attempts. Should all fail, the session will reset. The log will also indicate if you may need to use an alternate AF mode to avoid focus failures.
Check out SnapShot Studio at http://www.allenchristopher.com/photo-booth.html