This Instructable is about: building an automated photo booth. The total build cost was around $150 as I re-used a lot of the components and materials I already had in my garage - in addition to what I could salvage from scrap yards. - I decided to build my own photo booth after trying to rent one from local photography studios. The going rate for a rented photo booth is around $600 in addition to the hourly rate of the attendent to watch over the equipment. As this was not in my wedding budget, and I did not want to deal with an additional vendor, I decided to build my own for under $200. My Goal - Build an automated photo booth for under $200 - that could be easily operated by anyone at a party - and is durable and compact enough to fit into a compact car.

From Free Picture Resizer: Free Photo Booth is another great entertaining application from Free Picture Solutions. Its job is to apply several visual effects to the webcam connected to your PC. The functionality of the app is very good with a high speed. It's so light-weight and very low amount of RAM is used; less than 70. MacOS High Sierra brings new forward-looking technologies and enhanced features to your Mac.

(Note* this photo booth does not print pictures. I have been working on a script that automatically uploaded the photo to flickr, but I did not finish it in time for the wedding. I'll try and include that in a future post ) Step 1: How It Works. The photo booth operation is simple.

Users walk up to the back side of the camera - See themselves on the screen - Press a button and strike a pose. The mechanics of the photo booth are a little bit more complicated, but ideally, the user never has to know what is going on under the hood. The guts behind this photo booth are based on OSX lion. With Lion, the photobooth application can be extended to full screen and it can be set to use an external camera. So I connect a logitech web cam and an external monitor to a laptop running OSX Lion. The only thing i needed to build in addition to this hardware setup was an array of lights and a button (mapped to the enter key) to trigger the photobooth application to take a picture.

The 'business end' of the photo booth can be seen in this step. Step 2: Software and Trigger Button. The photo booth was modeled after an old school LOMO camera, instead of the traditional box with a curtain, for three reasons: - Ease of construction - Its basically a box with a fake lens on it - Recognition - People will be able to see a large camera from far away, and they might easily deduce that it must take photos in some form or fashion. - Novelty - The accentuated size of the camera will create a conversation piece in addition to eliminating the fear of social contract (the users fear of approaching and using it without permission or instruction) After settling on the design, I sketched it out in adobe illustrator (the.AI file is included on this page). Illustrator is a good tool to make quick 'blueprints' which can be easily scaled and printed.

If you don't already own adobe illustrator, you can get the demo right here With this quick blueprint, I created a front and side view of the camera. The size of the camera is dictated by the size of the LCD monitor and a a varying height range of users - something that would be easily accessible for people who are 5'2' - 6'4'. After completing the design, I measured the size of the panels and started building.

The Adobe Illustrator file (.AI) is attached to this page. The camera body was designed to mount onto a heavyweight tripod. Inorder to make it stable, I had to provide an additional support in which the tripod tube could slide into and lock. I borrowed this tripod from a friend. It has a 1 1/4' Outer Diameter tube which i used to mount onto.

Home Depot sells galvanized pipe with an Inner Diameter that is slightly larger than 1 1/4' in addition to the necessary surface mounting hardware. The galvanized pipe has a hole drilled into it, allowing me to insert a pin (which intersects with holes in the tripod tube), creating a stable mount that can only be released from inside the camera box.

Step 6: Box Construction. Heat is an issue - After watching the computer overheat with about 15 minutes of use, I realized that heat was a big issue. I installed some old PC fans to help get rid of the heat. Mac computers heat up with the Lid closed - Even with installing the fans, the compute was getting too hot. My original mouting system secured the computer in a vibration proof rig - with the lid closed. It was only after opening the computer so that the processor fans could run unobstructed that the device no longer overheated. This discovery led to 1 more fan (in the base of the camera box) and a mount which held the computer open.

The button was in the wrong place - with the button on the edge of the camera box, pressing it too hard caused the box to rock back and forth. Potentially an issue with inebriated guests, I moved the button to the center of the camera box, so that the force is directly perpendicular to the tripod. Step 9: Details and Finishing - Part 1. This might have an obvious answer, but what is actually being used to take the picture, the mac webcam? Seems like you could get better results, and much less heat by using a raspberry pi with a pi cam. Of course you probably would have had a little more coding work to do, maybe you thought of that and just didn't have the time. Someone else reading this may benefit from my comment on that though.

Additionally, if they don't have a mac, the raspberry pi would be an ultra cheap alternative. I have considered doing this myself with several pi cams to get multiple perspectives of the same shot.

No need to print when auto-uploading. The guests can just order the shots they want right from flickr, or whatever site is being used. Just supply some business cards with instructions on how to go about it. Furthermore they could just download them and take 'em to Wal-Mart or Walgreens, or wherever. Just my two cents! Thank you for the idea and inspiration! I just got married and thought this would be a great addition to the reception, and it was, people could not stop taking pictures.

My Photo Booth is on the heavier side requiring 2 people to move it. It has 2 monitors; one for viewing the HD webcam feed on the Sparkbooth Software and the other monitor on the other side running Faststone image viewer displaying a constantly updated slideshow of pictures already taken. Everything is being run off my PC laptop and triggered by a button tied to a USB keyboard PCB. I plan on redesigning the box to be much smaller and lighter and have a built in PC so all one should have to do is plug it in and everything starts automatically making it very easy to rent out someday.

I ended up building a photobooth for my wedding after I saw how much they are to rent. I used my Macbook Pro inside and wired 4 computer fans on the sides to keep everything cool.

There is ZERO heat inside the box. I used a HD webcam and just recently installed LEDs for lighting for the next wedding it will be at this weekend. I upload all the images after the wedding to a dedicated Flikr account for each wedding and leave business cards with the booth at the event with the web address on it. I used a SteathSwitch II slave switch as the only button the guest can press to take the photo.

The application I use is the built in PhotoBooth app. Everything is inside and not accessible to the guests, so I don't need to worry about anything getting broken unless they toss the box off the table or decide to carry it out with them.

The box is made of cheap 1/4' wood so it's fairly light and then I just stained it to make it look nicer. It was a big hit at my wedding and I look forward to using it at other people's weddings and events. For an application that doesn't need to be particularly durable, foam-core can work. There are also industrial cardboards that are used in construction that are strong and light. Acrylic is a good option, and it's not expensive.

A 48x96 sheet (1/8' clear cast acrylic), cut into more manageable sizes, is less than $100 at the plastics place near our house. Opaque colors aren't much more (like a few dollars or so per sheet). Just watch for sharp edges when transporting this! At the expensive end of the spectrum are composites, such as carbon fiber-resin composites. You can build them yourself (not cheap), or use sheets and have them cut for your use (also not cheap).

Marine plywood clad in fiberglass is light and durable, and not as expensive as you might think (Pygmy Boats uses this construction for their nice, light kayaks). It all depends on how much work you want to do, and how much you're willing to spend! I agree with jiivaneshvar on the keyboard hack. Arduino is kinda overkill if you have a single, simple button embedded in the case. There are lots of tutorials on keyboard hacking in the DIY arcade community, just search for 'MAME cabinet keyboard hack', and I'm sure you'll get something.

I imagine this would be cheaper and easier for most, though it would take up a bit more space. That being said, if you ARE familiar with Arduino, the possibilities here are endless. You could use the button to simultaneously trigger a flash, for example. To further this idea, the Arduino's code could be tweaked over time to get the synchronization right with the lights, but another, simpler method would be to turn the lights on for half a second, and take the photo a quarter second into that. No synchronization needed, and the added benefit of some red eye reduction! Remember, the further you can separate the flash from the camera, the better the lighting will be, and the less red eye problems you'll have.

The pre-flash helps, too, by causing the subject's pupils to contract. A bright red LED can have the same effect, as well, with the added benefit of being less painful to look. If you were to add a mobile photo printer to the device, with a slot, you could send a print command with a second button (after displaying a preview). Have the thing full of photo paper, choose the layout you want (can all be done programmatically using AppleScript, which I'm sure you can run with a command from the Arduino), and print! While this does add some cost to the project, it's another option, and shouldn't be that expensive. It might even still come in under $350, plus the computer you're using.

Pick up an old (a couple years old) macbook, and it can stay dedicated to the photo booth! Add some pipe and drape, a backlit green screen (LED lit white panel, with Arduino color sensors to switch to blue if subjects are wearing green), choose a custom background, and go nuts!

Now I should probably build something like this, since I've been commenting with a stream of consciousness. Cool in the way that it's cool and fun to make photo booths for events like these, but just one question: Why Lomo? The entire point of the Lomography community, as far as I am aware, is to celebrate ANALOG technology. So while Lomo has hipster cred and thus is an obvious choice for this venue, this doesn't seem like an idea Lomographers would actually celebrate (unless you nested an analog camera within the fake camera, which would be pretty cool, though extremely impractical to actually implement).

5,303,965 downloads (on my server only) • Easy to use: Drag & Drop • Generate High-resolution pictures (400 dpi), 'ready-to-print' with a Polaroid design • Funny: only 10 treatments per session, like the content of a cartridge; interactive (look at the demo below); random and realistic Polaroid-like colors variation. Have fun!!!;) your Poladroid picture. • • Please, donate or visits my partners (banners). Thanx.:) Polaroid™ is owned. Be aware: Poladroid is not a trademark of Polaroid Corp.

It's just a software which reproduces Polaroid Rendering. 1685 comments [ ]. 1604 - Alain, February 6, 2010, 11:26 pm: Hello Dominik, i just did an article on my Disney and more site with old pictures of Walt Disney that i've put through your PolaDroid app. You can see the result here: I like so much PolaDroid that last year i did a previous article with pictures from the parks and you can see the result here: As my site have 4000 visits each day and with the link i did to your site it should bring many people, well i hope so! Thanks a lot for this great software! 1597 - Andre, February 2, 2010, 4:34 pm: Email worm Tored.c in Polaroid app Worm After a scan Spyware Terminator I get the same high alert warning on email-worm.Win 32.Tored.c High Risk in Crogram FilesPoladroidPoladroid.exe and a couple other related registry entries.

I scanned a freshly downloaded version of your program and it didnt trigger the antivirus. So this might mean that either after install a virus got hold of the poladdroid exec files or the place I downloaded from a while back was infected. Knowingly or not.

So I rmeoved it too. Will reinstall maybe later on a disposable machine setup. 1420 - Chris, September 14, 2009, 9:06 am: Poladroid Great program!! I love how the polaroids come out looking retro. One thing I dislike is hi-res photos always get cropped in the program, so if the subject of the photo is not in the center it will almost always be cropped. I tried making photos smaller before using the program but that didn't work.

Photos that are already at a low resolution don't get cropped or sometimes they do but not all that much. Or am I missing an option that prevents this from happening? Still love it though. 1404 -, August 30, 2009, 9:19 pm: It's INCREDIBLE! 8/25 computer crashed and I lost 7 years of digital photos.no I didn't burn to DVD.a hard lesson learned.

I'm on a borrowed computer until I can have a new one built for me so I've been despairing about my loss for days. But what the Lord taketh away he giveth back in spades because some how, some way I stumbled onto this site today. I shed real tears when I realized that I will actually be able to produce the much loved polaroid format. A million thanks for making this a possibility. I will donate $$$ as soon as I am able because as far a I'm concerned this widget is PRICELESS!

1330 -, July 25, 2009, 9:49 pm: Text option on poladroid Hi Jacob, just to share with you, in case you use photoshop, it is very easy to add handwriten text over your poladroid image. That way you can choose your prefered font style and size, you can actualy add some more asimetrical writing, using diferent font size or even make it look a bit unstraight so that way it will for certain look like you actually wrote over the blanck space. I've been doing it and loved the result! You can check some examples on my blog greetings. 1188 - Tim, May 21, 2009, 4:24 pm: Feature Requests First: I love it.

I was thinking of buying a Polaroid camera but I guess now I'll buy a digicam and simply throw all shots into the Poladroid. Besides the vintage awesomeness it would be great to have some kind of 'advanced' mode: - Option to disable the developing time and get the result instantly - Infinite cartridge - Further tweaking of the stripes thing. I like the stripes but the fingerprints or somewhat disturbing sometimes. - Cleaner programming. Why don't you check whether there are running processes instead of showing the annoying dialog on every quit? 1137 - Xeon, April 24, 2009, 1:00 pm: Re: Lark7 & AVBABY Both of you sound like sour grapes.

The reality is, the only chance instant films have a chance of surviving is increased interest on the part of the public, that said, I think it is an uphill battle as the world has shifted to digital so widely. IN REAL TIME a real polaroid will have significant value as a result of its physical properties, but in the digital world, it has (And always has had) less value then ANY picture who's source is digital if for no other reason then the fact it is a film being scanned, etc. I have 4 real polaroid cameras that I have not been able to buy picture cartridges for some time (1 of which is actually my first digital photo printer for my computer-gasp real polaroids from digital pictures how scandalous) and I have 1 camera that the cost of the film and availability makes it nearly impossible to use, I have 3 digi cameras however that I can enjoy taking pictures from any day of the week and I can run thru poladroid and get the same image I would have scanned. So instead of barking up negative on this tree, why not keep to the positive that this program could revitalize interest in the real film. 1133 -, April 23, 2009, 3:51 pm: This Software Makes Me Sad Okay, I would agree that it's pretty cool to create Polaroid-like images easily without having to worry about the cost of the films.

I will also admit that some effects are cool. And when you take it to the next level by making an iPhone version, i mean, kudos to that. But what makes me sad is the fact that when anyone who uses this software shows off their 'photos' to other people, some people (a lot of people, I think) will actually believe that they're really taken by Polaroid cameras. Or when someone sees an actual Polaroid photo, they might think that it's created by this software. Either way it decreases the value of real Polaroid images and hurts the pride of real Polaroid users.

If you could perhaps add a watermark on the outcome, then maybe that can help our feelings a little. True, people may still remove the watermark from Photoshop or such, but that will be the extra work they'll have to go through. And they'll realize that they're fooling others as well as themselves (fooling others is worse though). As someone who's making a push for an instant photography community in my country, I hope you and everyone can see my concern.

Note: To me, the processed images seem more Lomo than Polaroid though. 1127 -, April 16, 2009, 8:29 pm: Love It!! Wow.first off, I can't believe all the negative comments on here. It's supposed to be a fun little FREEEEEE program and people are acting like the creater is destroying a way of life.

I suggest y'all relax and worry about the other, more important things in life while making some cool poladroids. Anyways.I love the program!! It's simple, easy to use, and just fun to flip my current photo stock.

I even gave it a little praise on my site. Check out the post at Cheers, Caleb. 895 - Elizabeth, January 29, 2009, 11:45 pm: Fun Thanks - this is fun. I'm not sure why people are so worked up - emotions run deep around the 'real' Polaroid, I guess, but this is clearly not the real Polaroid. My parents were big Polaroid lovers, so I grew up with real Polaroids - which gives me some option ideas. I don't suppose you could make the computer have that Polaroid developing *smell.

But you could make the photos DISAPPEAR after several years - or, if you're going back to the really old Polaroids, stick to anything that gets close to them on humid days. 890 - Whmi1963, January 27, 2009, 4:57 am: Naysayers I am 45 and have been taking photos since I was ten when I got my first camera. This product was never meant to replace the real polaroids and was never meant to replace 'real' photography, which is more subjective today than it ever was. What makes a good photo is in the eye of the beholder as they say. Whether you use film or digital is not the point, it is the end result.

The person who takes a photo and places the end product out there for you to see is showing you the world from their perspective, how they see it or would like to see it, and they want to share that with you. If you don't like the product, just delete it and leave. Meanwhile, those of us who do like it will continue to use it and contribute. If there is ever a paid version I will buy it.

If there is ever an iPhone version, I will buy it. This is a great and fun application and many people enjoy it. It has not killed the real polaroids nor film photography. 872 - Pmw, January 23, 2009, 8:34 am: DIGITAL DISASTER HAHA. So the format that ruined real Polaroids wants to beat the dead horse, and bleed every last bit out of it by still showing an interest.

But of course only with a lower quality imitation of the original. How could you not see this coming? Right down to the cross-processed slide film look.

Everything with digital is about convenience over quality. Laziness over skill.

Fake over real. I'm so happy ILFORD is supporting this (and they're also fighting to keep darkrooms in schools, where people can learn real photography. As opposed to the effortless operation of a digital image capture device. 862 - Saumil Shah, January 19, 2009, 10:41 pm: EXIF Features Hi Paul, many thanks for a BRILLIANT app!

Download Ufc Undisputed 2011 Keygen Generator. I'm here with a feature request. Can you copy over some of the existing EXIF tags from the source photos into the new Poladroid photos? The most important ones would be the time and date. I know other EXIF tags such as focal length, shutter speed, etc don't matter as much, since these are reprocessed, but if you do carry over some basic EXIF tags, photo management software such as iPhoto and Picasa can make good use of meta-data.

848 - Paul Ladroid, January 18, 2009, 6:31 pm: @ Chris and tings: please look at your 'download folder'. The 'Download request not authorized' is only shown when the user clicks on download links two times (double click) or clicks from an outside link. The first time (click), the download process is running.

It's why, you must wait few seconds (exactly, 10 seconds) before trying again. Another point: read correctly the message on the Download request not authorized' window. This is: Wait 10 secondes. Please, try again in 10 seconds before launching another downloading from the download area. The downloading can begin with a little bit of latency. That page will be refreshed after 10 seconds and you'll be redirected automatically into the DOWNLOAD AREA.

754 - Taina, January 5, 2009, 5:10 pm: Wonderful! ^^ Thank you so much for realeasing this for free to us.

♥ I just downloaded the Windows version and i'm loving it.;D I have a couple of suggestions though, i don't know if you'll read this, but anyways. Maybe you should give us an option to use the stripes/dust/scratches effect, with or without those finger prints on it, cause sometimes they appear on a place that kinda ruins the picture. Like when they appear right on top of someones face, it looks weird. And the other suggestion i have is that sometime in the future you could maybe release a Photoshop Action only for the image effect without the frame, so we could use it on rectangular pictures, instead of just squared ones. That's all, i hope you consider this on future versions of this amazing program. And i wish you great success on this wonderful project of yours, i'm sure it'll be even greater that it already is.

637 -, December 18, 2008, 12:58 pm: Answer! I ain't jealous of nothing.We (cause there's more than just me) just don't agree! It goes against our belifs. If you say that u do have an SX-70, u should be with us trying not to stop the production of the cartridges! But nooooo.you're sitting in front of your computer doing fake Polaroids.

NICE.you're so smart and 'BABA OVO' of Paul Ladroid. 'You just sound so gay' I thought we were not insulting anymore. As your good virtual friend said. And calling someone 'gay' is discrimination.hope you're not going to jail for that! And by the way.I'M NOT ALONE! I have my True friends, tha also uses True Polaroidas.awesome isn't it?

Love you all fakers. 625 - Me, December 15, 2008, 4:06 pm: Be nice are you like really bored and on this website all day cause it seems like you left all the comments and your complaining for no reason so give up. Because you could just leave if you hate this so much.

Go play with your real polaroid, if i had film then i would play with the real thing but i ran out and most people cant find the film anywhere eaither, this is a really nice thing that he has made and i am 'patiently' waiting for windows: ) get a life mean person. 618 - Hei, December 14, 2008, 12:20 am: TO True Polaroid User: I just think you are so jealous of this program.

You are jealous of how everyone supported him. Now everyone can enjoy or get an experience about how playing with Polaroid feels like.

Are you being self-abased that is just because now everyone can have the fun as you do? Mr or whatever Ms True Polaroid User.

Come on.I am a true Polaroid user as well. I got a SX-70 and I know how much fun it is, but I also enjoy seeing this thing happens. Everyone just wants to have some fun. Maybe it is because now everyone can play 'Polaroid' in the internet and you are just holding your pail of papers? I believe everyone who got eyes can tell what is the differences.

So if you dun like this, why dun you leave this site and play with your own Polariod and hear the sound of a true polaroid camera ALONE while we are all having fun with this TOGETHER. You just sound so gay and disgust everyone. 616 -, December 13, 2008, 4:48 pm: The real smell Have you ever tryed the REAL POLAROID EXPERIENCE? It's like that: You go and pick a Polarois Camera for you. Than you buy some cartridge. After that you go (by yourself or with friends) to every place you think it's interesting.

Find a nice spot. SHOOT, hear the sound of a true polaroid camera, see the picture coming out of the camera and wait! That's all.but it was great! And the best thing is.you have some real polaroid to keep.and you were not in front of the computer listening to digital sounds of a polaroid camera!

Datalogic Skorpio X3 Driver Windows 7 here. Love *Hope this can be usefull for some of you*. 596 - Joel, December 9, 2008, 6:57 am: Real mature; we should all be supporting this project and supporting eachother.

Once the windows version is released it'll open up a much much larger audience and the man will get more well deserved donations! Im disgusted on how half of these mac enthusiasts are acting, in the end they are all computers and you know what? The way macs are heading they use PC parts now anyway, a lot of the guys at work that use mac are dual booting into windows. Both operating systems have pros and cons so lets stop arguing about it and support and donate this awesome project! 584 -, December 6, 2008, 12:36 am: Nice =] I've recently tried the Poladroid app on a mac and i found the tool unique and useful as i can't seem to by any film anymore so my Polaroid is just sitting there collecting dust, However this is a great application to use ^^ i will use it but if i ever get my hands on the original stuff i will use that =D as film i love more than digital. I can't wait to use it on windows *thumbs up* It would be cool if there was some sort of app on the PSP which used the psp Camera etc. 547 - Warren, November 27, 2008, 10:27 pm: Thanks Heard about this via Such a cool idea and beautifully, simply implemented.

I know in this day and age everyone wants MORE control, MORE features, MORE, MORE, MORE. I think the randomness and lack of features adds to the charm of the app. ISight integration would be nice and a way to choose your crop - perhaps you could pan around the original JPEG through a realistic viewfinder? To all those who are impatient and have posted such rude and negative comments - get a life.

Think about the fact that Paul has invested many hours of his own personal time and effort to give this to all of us ABSOLUTELY FREE. If you don't want to say thanks or make a positive suggestion, rather just keep your opinions to yourself. @Paul - keep up the great work - the fact that you can still answer some of these ridiculous posts in good spirit and humour tells me you must be a really cool person. So, cool software made by a cool person.

Be happy people.