Photo Booth Upload is a powerful content creation tool that can make green screen images, animated GIFs, photo strips, slow motion videos, VR360 images, and much more. This series of Getting Started tutorials will give you the tools you need to setup a multi-photo layout, adjust camera settings, and some other general settings.

Photo Booth Upload works hand in hand with Photo Party Upload, so you must use PPU if you want to print or share from PBU. You can find our getting started tutorials for Photo Party Upload HERE.

In Part 1 of this series we'll go over the basics of the interface and the Preferences tab of PBU settings. Let's get started!

When you first open PBU you'll be presented with a screen similar to this (but without the ridiculous face):

A full screen live view of what your camera sees, and a Photo button. This is called the Main Screen. You can take a photo right now, if you wish, but let's shrink the live view a little bit first so we can see the background.

1.

Press S on your keyboard or triple click on the bottom right corner to open Settings. You should now be presented with this screen:

Welcome to PBU Preferences! If you look at the top of the screen you can see all the various tabs that will display different functions of PBU. There's a lot here, but let's focus on changing the size of the live view.

2.

At the bottom of the screen you should see an Options section with a lot of check boxes in it. At the bottom right of this section, you should see an option called Live View Scale currently set at 100. Click the minus button and set it to 90. Click OK at the bottom.

Much better! Now we can see our software background, and the preview isn't so overwhelming. Let's take a photo and see what happens...

3.

Press the Photo button at the bottom of the screen. You should see (and hear if you have speakers) a countdown in the upper left for 3 seconds, then the photo will take.

If you're running Photo Party Upload Helper (as you should) and have an event selected, you should now be presented with a share screen. It will display all sharing options enabled in your PPU event.

Try sharing if you like or press Done to go back to the beginning.

4.

Now that we know how to take a simple photo and change the Live View Scale, let's dive into PBU Settings and learn how to change some important things. We won't go over everything! Just enough to get you going.

Press S or triple click the bottom right corner of the screen.

Before we continue, take a look at the OK and Cancel buttons at the bottom of the screen. Think of the OK button as a save button. If you hit Cancel, any changes that you made while PBU Settings was open will NOT be saved. You must hit OK to save any changes that you make. The same is true for any OK and Cancel buttons you see in any of the windows in PBU. If you're making a lot of changes, we recommend you press OK periodically to save your work.

Onward!

In the upper left of the Preferences tab have a look at the Folders section. This is where you'll change the location to where your images/videos/GIFs are saved.

Before we continue, again, take note of the small blue question mark bubble in the upper right corner. The same symbol is scattered all over PBU, and clicking it can give you some valuable information about what you're seeing.

Originals Folder is where the original, unprocessed files from the camera are saved.

PBU takes those original files, processes them, and saves them to the Output Folder.

You can change the location of both folders by clicking the Browse buttons on the right. To make things simpler, check the box labeled Make Sub-folder of output folder. This will create a folder named Originals inside the Output Folder and keep all your files organized.

Pro tip: Make a new folder for every event! That will make it much easier to organize your media as you do more and more events.

Note: If you are running Photo Party Upload Helper (as you should), changing the Output Folder will automatically change the Watched Folder for your event to match.

Filename Prefix will add whatever you input into that field to the beginning of every file you make in PBU.

Append Random Sequence: Check this box if you would like PBU to add a random sequence of characters to the end of the file name. 

Software Background will change the green and red bubbly background in PBU to the image of your choice. The image will be stretched to fit, but for best results your image should match your screen resolution.

5.

To the right of Folders is Hot Keys:

This displays the hotkeys you use on your keyboard to open Settings, Minimize PBU, and Exit PBU. They are only usable while on the Main Screen, but you can press the Hot Keys button in this section to bring up a set of buttons that will allow you to Exit and Minimize PBU from with the Settings screen.

You can change the Hot Keys by clicking in their respective fields and then pressing whatever button you want to use on your keyboard.

6.

Below Hot Keys is Trigger Photo With:

This section will determine how your Camera is triggered. We'll go over the most commonly used settings.

Countdown is the default setting that you've already experienced when you took the photo earlier. A timer will appear counting down the same number of seconds you set in Duration.

Clicking Countdown Settings will allow you to change the color and position of the countdown, as well as enable or disable an audio countdown.

Mouse will trigger the camera when you use the right mouse button. You can also tap the left and right side of the screen outside of the Live View area to trigger the camera. This is our preferred method at events! It provides the most control and speed. Give it a try!

Mouse with Countdown combines the two. You trigger the countdown with the right mouse button or by tapping the side of the screen.

7.

In the upper right of the screen is the Settings section.

Here you can Export all graphics and settings in PBU to a file that you can Import later, use as a backup, or use on a different computer that also runs PBU.

It can be very convenient to create all your settings on another PC without setting up your booth! You can even do so on an unlicensed version of PBU, transfer to a licensed version, and your graphics and settings will work perfectly.

Download PBU HERE to try it!

Pro Tip: Always Export your PBU file before your event! Sometimes, files can get corrupted or deleted and it's always good to have a backup.

Restore Generic will restore all the generic graphic files that come with PBU.

Clear All will delete all graphics files. It will not effect the Preferences screen nor will it delete the LED patterns used in the INFINITE booth. We usually Clear All before we make the settings for an event, to keep everything nice and tidy. It has the added benefit of making your exported PBU file much smaller!

8.

At the bottom of the screen you'll see the Options section. We've already changed some things here, but now I'll describe some other important functions.

• Disable Photo will remove the Photo button on the Main Screen, and prevent you from taking regular pictures. This affects normal photos, Page Designs, and normal Green Screen photos.
• Disable Share Screen will skip the share screen you saw after taking a picture. This is useful if you're just printing but especially if you have additional sharing stations.
• Quick Mode will remove a lot of the transitions between phases of the photo taking process and allow you to start capturing photos/videos/GIFs much quicker.
• Enable Home Button activates a button on the bottom left of the screen that will allow you to cancel a session. Useful for multi-photo Page Designs.
• Preview Screen (button on the right) will allow you to display a preview of the photo/video/GIF on the screen, and give you options for how long it stays on the screen. If you don't set a time it will stay there until you tap the preview. Disabling this option will only show the preview for a few seconds.
• Live View Scale will change the size of the live view to a percentage of the Main Screen.

Phew! That's quite a lot to cover. We did skip some things to make our getting started tutorial more digestible, but if you're still hungry have a look at our in depth overview of the Preferences tab HERE.

In Part 2 of our Getting Started series we'll go over the basics of the Camera Settings. That's where you'll make sure your images turn out the best they can be! Click HERE for Part 2!