Guest photos by email

Besides the booth's own shots, guests can contribute their own photos: they send an email with a fixed subject to a given address, the booth checks the mailbox regularly and takes the photos into the gallery, the slideshow and the gallery on the tablet. This pays off at weddings and parties where many guests take pictures with their phones anyway.

Setting up#

Create a dedicated mailbox, for example photos@your-domain.com at a web host.
Admin area "Access & accounts" > "Mailbox for guest photos (IMAP)": enter server, username and password, save and "Test connection".
Admin area "Gallery" > "Guest photos by email": switch it on and set a subject code, for example the suggestion from the event name.
Tell guests the address and the code - on a sign, in the invitation or by announcement.

The code belongs to the event, the mailbox to the device. Several events can therefore share one mailbox as long as each has its own code. Emails that arrived before the code was set are left alone - so no test emails from an earlier party end up in the gallery.

What happens to the photos#

The booth checks at the set interval, every minute by default. "Fetch now" fetches immediately.
Only emails with the code in the subject are imported. "Re:" or "Fwd:" in front and upper or lower case do not matter.
Every photo is written anew: rotated according to the phone's information, scaled down to at most 4000 pixels and without location data or other camera details. Logos from signatures and very small images are dropped.
At most ten photos per email are imported, at most 30 per sender per hour.
The booth does not read photos in HEIC format; they are skipped. The iPhone's Mail app sends photos as JPG anyway; other apps do not always. The window "Add your own photos" therefore asks for JPG, and with the confirmation switched on, it tells the guest what is missing.
Afterwards the email is marked as read, moved to a folder or deleted - this is set with the mailbox. The booth also remembers imported emails itself and never fetches one twice.

In the gallery a guest photo behaves like a shot: it can be printed, sent by email and deleted under admin area "Gallery" > "Manage images".

Approval#

With "Show photos only after approval", a guest photo does not go into the gallery at first. It waits under admin area "Gallery" > "Manage images" above the other pictures, with preview, time of arrival and sender. "Approve" takes it into the gallery, slideshow and tablet, "Reject" deletes it after asking once more. A dot at the menu item "Gallery" shows that photos are waiting.

If "Manage gallery" is enabled in the quick settings, the host can approve as well; the sender is not shown there. Approval makes sense at large or public parties where the address and the code quickly get around.

Gallery button and QR code#

As soon as the address and the code are set, the "Guest photos by email" section shows a QR code. Scanned with a phone, it opens an email to the photo booth with the subject already filled in. "Download QR code" saves it as a picture for table stands, place cards or invitations; the text below can be copied and adapted.

By default the gallery also shows the button "Add your own photos" - on the booth next to the back button, on the tablet below the heading. It opens a window with QR code, address, subject and three short steps. The button only appears while the booth is actually fetching; if reception is off or the booth is offline, it disappears by itself. It can be switched off with "Show the “Add your own photos” button in the gallery".

Filter in the gallery#

With "Offer a filter by source", three buttons appear above the pictures: "Show all", "Guest photos only" and "Photo booth photos only". They only show once the gallery contains at least one guest photo. The switch exists twice - under "Gallery Settings" for the gallery on the booth and under "Gallery on an external device" for the tablet. When the gallery opens and after the return due to inactivity, "Show all" applies again; the slideshow stays unfiltered.

"Maximum number of gallery pictures" applies to each choice separately: "Guest photos only" shows the newest guest photos, even if the booth has taken many pictures recently.

Confirmation to the guest#

With "Send a confirmation by email", the guest gets a short reply as soon as the booth has taken over the photos of their email. It goes out via the mail access (SMTP); if mail sending is off or not yet set up, a warning strip points this out.

The supplied text names the number of photos and, with approval switched on, that they only appear afterwards. It comes in the event's language.
Subject and text can be replaced. Placeholders: {{count}} for the number of photos, {{event}} for the event name. A custom text applies with and without approval alike.
Out-of-office notes, mailing lists and other automatic emails get no reply, and the same address at most one every ten minutes. That way no loop arises between two automatic systems.
The window "Add your own photos" in the gallery announces the confirmation as long as it really goes out.

A folder of their own in the cloud and export#

Guest photos never sit among the booth's shots but always in a folder of their own, "Gast-Bilder" by default - even when subfolders for categories are otherwise off:

Cloud: under the event's folder, as long as "Upload to the cloud" is on. In your own web photo album they appear as a category of their own, "Guest photos by email".
Live folder export: in "Gast-Bilder" as well, once the export is switched on.
"Export event photos" and catching up in the cloud: with a checkbox of their own, "Guest photos by email".

The folder name is set by the folder names of the cloud and the live folder export. Waiting photos only leave the booth once approved.

When the booth fetches nothing#

Fetching pauses while receiving is switched off, the code is missing, no mailbox is set up, the booth runs in offline mode, privacy by default is switched on or the gallery is switched off. A warning strip below the switch names the reason. The "Last fetch" block shows what happened last and, after an error, gives the reason and advice.

Privacy#

The sender address stays on the photo booth only, with the respective picture - for example for a deletion request. It does not appear in the gallery, the slideshow or on the tablet. The emails themselves stay with the mail provider until they are deleted; the "Delete" setting of the mailbox is therefore the most economical one. More under Data and privacy.

When the booth accepts guest photos, the usage and privacy notice gets a section of its own, "Your own photos by email": what is taken over, who sees the photos, whether they are approved first, what happens to the email in the mailbox, and the request to only send photos that everyone pictured agrees to share. Whoever sends by email rarely stands in front of the notice at the booth - the window "Add your own photos" therefore offers it via the button "Privacy notice", on the booth as well as on the tablet.

The supplied confirmation email also says that a reply is enough to have the photos deleted again. The reply goes to the sender of the mail access (SMTP) - an address nobody reads is no good for this.