Operator guide

Everything an operator needs, from the first launch to the venue, with a picture of every panel. Print this page: the print view drops the menus and keeps the pictures.

First ten minutes

From a fresh laptop to a working booth. Nothing here needs a file or a setting to be edited by hand. No Windows laptop to hand? Every panel below also runs in the browser demo with your webcam, so the steps can be rehearsed before the install.

1. Install. Get the installer from the download page, run it and click through the Windows warning (the download page shows exactly where). OhSnap opens full screen when the installer finishes.
2. The Help panel opens by itself. Only on the first launch. It lists six steps and ticks each one as the booth passes it. Every step has a button that takes you to the right panel.
3. Check the camera. Step one shows LIVE with the camera's name and size. If it says NOT RUNNING, press Cameras, choose the camera in the list and press Restart camera.
4. Take a test photo. Press the button in step two, or close the panel and press Space. You see the countdown, the flash, then the review screen with Retake and Keep. Step two ticks itself when the booth is idle again.
5. Find the photo. Step three names the folder and Open folder opens it in Explorer. By default it is Pictures\OhSnap, then the event name, then today's date.
6. Bind your button. Plug it in, press Bind a button, press Bind next press next to Take a photo, press the button once. That is the whole procedure for a keyboard-type button, which is nearly all of them.
7. Brand it. Branding: a logo and a prompt for the waiting screen, a frame or watermark for the photo, and text lines with the event name and date.
8. Close the panel. Escape or Close. Guests only ever see the stage. Every panel comes back with Ctrl+Shift+A.

Help inside the app

The Help tab, or Ctrl+Shift+H, from anywhere. The quick start reads the live state of the booth every time it opens: camera, whether a photo has been taken, the folder, which buttons take a photo, what branding is set, and whether the window is full screen. Under it are short how-tos for every job on this page, each with a button to the panel it happens on, then the chord table and a link back to this guide.

The admin drawer

Every panel lives in one drawer on the right of the stage, so the picture stays in view while you change things. Each tab has an icon and its chord in the panel's top right corner. The sun and moon button in the head switches the drawer between light and dark; dark is easier on the eyes in a dim venue. Diagnostics, Admin drawer has the same switch, Larger text in this drawer for a small or distant laptop screen, and Show the Gallery tab. The Gallery is optional: with it off there is no tab, no chord and no how-to for it, and the photos are exactly where they were. Nothing about the drawer ever reaches the guest screen.

Motion in the drawer. Diagnostics, Admin drawer, Motion in this drawer: None: nothing moves, Subtle (how a new install starts) or Lively. Panels, their rows, the tabs, toasts and windows then arrive in turn each time a panel is opened, and the panel replays itself as you pick so you can see the difference. It moves the drawer only, never the guest's screen. Windows' own reduce-motion setting stills it, and so does Motion off under Look, Readability.

Key chords

The guest screen never shows a menu. Every admin surface is a chord, and each panel shows its own chord in its top right corner.

Binding a button

1. Plug the device in. Open Inputs (Ctrl+Shift+I).
2. Pick the kind: keyboard, gamepad, MIDI, serial or HID. Most USB buttons and foot pedals are keyboards. A scanner or button box that types a word and Enter is HID.
3. Next to Take a photo, press Bind next press, then press the button. A toast confirms. Every action can have any number of buttons; the red x removes one.
4. If the button types a letter that clashes with something, reprogram it to F13 to F24. Windows uses none of them.
5. A booth with several buttons that should all snap: press Any key next to Take a photo. Every plain key then takes a photo. Keys with Ctrl, Alt or the Windows key held are left alone, so the chords still work, and a key bound to something else (Escape cancels) keeps that job. Not for a booth with a scanner that types.

Serial. An Arduino that prints a word per press: open the Devices fold-out, choose the port, match the baud to the sketch and tick Listen. Then bind with kind serial and press the button; each different word is its own binding. Unplug and replug is fine.

Global. Tick it on a keyboard binding and the key fires even when OhSnap is not the focused window. Windows may refuse a key another app owns; the binding then shows why. Hold means the button must stay down for half a second, so a knock cannot take a photo. Idle only makes that button count only while the booth is waiting: a guest leaning on it during the countdown or the review changes nothing. Any key is idle only from the start.

Devices, serial port and last seen is a fold-out at the bottom of the panel. Last seen lists every press the app hears, bound or not. Nothing there means the device is not reaching OhSnap.

Backgrounds

Open Backgrounds (Ctrl+Shift+B). Drop a JPG, PNG, MP4 or WebM onto the panel, use Add files, or paste a URL. Click a thumbnail to use it; the mode follows the file. Choose the mode by hand for live camera or a flat colour. Blur and dim soften a live feed into a backdrop. The stage swaps as soon as nobody is mid-snap.

The camera is drawn on top of the background, so with the subject box at its full size you will not see the background at all. Shrink the box in Branding (say 70 by 70) and the background shows around the guest. To cut the guest out of the room instead of framing them in it, hang a cloth and turn on Green screen.

Branding

Open Branding (Ctrl+Shift+W). Everything here is off until you set it, and the saved photo uses the same numbers as the screen.

• Idle screen. A logo and a prompt line that show while waiting, never on the photo. The prompt has its own font, a size as a percentage of the screen height (0 keeps the automatic size), and an effect: pulse, float, glow or a shimmer that sweeps the letters. The logo can float or pulse. None stills either.
• Subject box. Where the camera sits, as percentages of the screen.
• Frame. A PNG with a transparent middle, stretched edge to edge.
• Watermark. Any image. While the panel is open, drag it on the stage to place it; width and opacity are fields.
• Frame for strips. A strip is a different shape from the screen, so it can have a frame of its own; blank uses the one above.
• Overlays: logos, stickers, badges. As many as you like, on top of the frame and the watermark. Each one says where it goes: the screen and the photo, the photo only (a sponsor mark the guests never see on screen) or the screen only; and which guest screens it stays on: waiting, the countdown and photos, the review. Add a corner logo that stays up makes one in a click, so the client's mark is there for the whole trip, not just while waiting. While the panel is open, drag an overlay on the stage to move it, drag a yellow corner to resize it and the blue knob to turn it (it snaps to the quarter turns; hold Shift for steps of 15 degrees). Per overlay: opacity, a blend (multiply for ink on white artwork, screen for white on black), and a white or black plate behind a logo so it reads over any photo. A GIF or a WebM plays on the screen and the photo takes the frame it is showing.
• Brand colour and font. One colour, one accent and one font for what the guest sees during a trip: the countdown, the "1 of 3" line, the wait prompt and the Keep button. A countdown colour or font picked on Look still wins, and high contrast keeps its black and white.
• This is what comes out. The picture at the top of the panel is the real output, made by the same code that makes the file, from the camera right now, and it redraws as you drag and type. With a strip it shows the printed page, copies side by side with the cut lines. With no camera a drawn guest stands in.
• Media. Every branding file with its size and dimensions and what uses it. Rename changes the name in the lists only. Replace puts a new file in the same place, so the frame, every overlay and the footer that use it all change at once: the fix for "the client sent a new logo at 5 pm". Delete asks first when something still uses the file. PNG, JPEG, WebP, GIF, AVIF, BMP and SVG, and MP4 / WebM / MOV clips; a still may be 25 MB, a clip 80 MB. An SVG that carries scripts or links to outside files is refused, with the reason.
• Text. As many lines as you like. {event} and {date} fill in when the photo is taken. Eight display fonts are built in (Bebas Neue, Bangers, Fredoka, Lobster, Nunito, Pacifico, Permanent Marker, Playfair Display); the rest are Windows fonts. Per line: bold, a drop shadow, an outline in any colour, a coloured glow, and an entrance (fade, rise, pop or slide) that plays each time the waiting screen comes back. Outline and glow are on the photo exactly as on screen; the entrance is screen only.
• Presets. Export preset writes every setting plus the logo, frame, watermark, backgrounds and sounds into one file. Import preset on the next machine restores the lot. Camera choice and the PIN stay local.

Live look

Look panel (Ctrl+Shift+L). What the guest sees and hears between pressing the button and the photo.

• Filter. None, black and white, sepia, vivid, cool, warm or faded, plus brightness and contrast. The live picture and the saved photo get exactly the same filter; a strip, a burst and a GIF too.
• Let the guest pick. A strip of small live previews, one per filter, along the top of the idle screen. Tapping one applies it to that guest's photo; after the photo the booth goes back to your filter. A trip that was cancelled counts as a trip that did not happen, so a guest who walks off leaves nothing behind for the next one; a retake keeps the look that guest chose. The actions Next filter and Previous filter on Inputs do the same from a button. The strip sits along the top, so keep text lines away from the top edge when it is on.
• Countdown. Numerals, a ring that sweeps around the number, a bar that drains across the bottom, or nothing on screen (the flash still happens, and the tick if you switched it on). A Get ready line shows for a moment before the numbers start. The numerals and the line take a colour and a font of yours. Preview the countdown runs it on the stage with the drawer stepped aside.
• Countdown motion. How each number comes in (pop, grow then settle, bounce, drop, flip, spin, focus, slam, elastic, slide, or just appear) and how it leaves (fade, shrink, blur, float up, fall, spin, cut), the seconds per number, the size, and where on the screen the number sits. An effect (glow, outline, hard shadow, neon) with its own colour. The motion follows the seconds per number, so a slow count breathes and a fast one snaps.
• Countdown pictures. Draw the numbers as a bundled sticker set (comic, neon sign, foil balloon, candy, marker doodle, caramel) instead of text, and play a backdrop clip (party burst, paper confetti, gold sparkles, light swirl) under the numbers, over the camera. Stickers take the motion and size but not the colour or font. The photo never includes any of it. See every look live on the countdown lab before you set it.
• Sounds. The booth is silent until you switch a sound on. Tick on every number and Shutter sound each have built-in varieties (tick: beep, soft blip, woodblock, arcade, chime, drum; shutter: camera click, soft click, film camera, pop, ta-da), and the Play buttons preview them. Replace either, or add a Get ready sound, with your own WAV, MP3, OGG or M4A: Add copies the file into OhSnap and it travels with the preset. Voice for the numbers lets the Windows voice say each number, or plays a file of yours per number instead of the tick. One volume for everything.
• Attract mode. While nobody is in front of the booth: cycle the uploaded backgrounds every so many seconds (your chosen background is back after a restart), and optionally show a wall of today's photos that swaps a picture every few seconds. The wall puts guests' faces on a screen everyone can see, so it is off until you switch it on. Both stop the moment someone presses the button.
• Mood loop while idle. One of the countdown's backdrop clips (party burst, paper confetti, gold sparkles, light swirl) plays softly over the live picture while nobody is at the booth; the strength slider sets how much it shows. It pauses the moment someone presses the button, never reaches the photo, and a stage with Motion switched off shows no loop at all.
• Readability. Three switches for a bright venue, a screen far from the guest, or anyone who finds small text or movement hard. High contrast puts a dark plate behind the prompt and the countdown and gives Keep and Retake a thick black outline. Big buttons makes the review buttons, the prompt and the filter strip larger. Motion off stills the prompt and logo effects, the text entrances, the filter chips and the review screen's settle-in; Windows' own reduce-motion setting does the same. Black and white only, so nothing here brands the stage, and the photo is exactly what it was.

Words on the guest screen

Every sentence a guest can read is a setting. Look panel, unfold Words on the guest screen: there is a row for each one, grouped by where it appears — the review buttons, the countdown and poses, printing, the QR card, and the lines shown when the camera or the printer lets the booth down.

• Type your own wording in a row, or leave it empty and the booth says what it has always said. The grey text in the box is the English it ships with.
• There are no language packs to install: a venue in Spain types Spanish straight into the rows, and a client with a house style types that.
• Some rows contain {n}, {total} or {reason}. The booth fills those in, so keep them in your sentence.
• A few strings already had a home of their own before this panel existed: the Get ready line higher up this same panel, the pose prompt and the word on the Printing badge on Output, and the message when the day is full on Diagnostics. Those four rows are shown but not editable here, and each says where to change it.
• Put every word back to English clears the lot.

The settings drawer itself stays in English. This is the guest screen only.

Green screen

The booth can put a guest anywhere. Hang a coloured cloth behind them, turn on Green screen on the Look panel, and the cloth is replaced by whatever background is set, both on the screen the guest is watching and in the photo that comes out.

1. Set a background first. Backgrounds, a picture or a colour. With the background left on the camera there is nothing for the cloth to be replaced by.
2. Take the colour from the cloth. Press Take a still from the camera and click the cloth in the picture. The booth reads the colour off it rather than asking you to know it.
3. Three sliders. Raise How much of it goes until the cloth has gone, and then stop. Soften the edge just enough for hair. Use the last slider if the cloth’s colour is bouncing onto arms and shoulders.

The preview on the panel is the live camera keyed by the very same code that makes the photo, so what you see there is what the printer will hand back. One end of the cloth being brighter than the other no longer matters: the key takes that in its stride, so there is nothing to chase there.

Two things it cannot do anything about, because nothing tells them apart from the cloth. A shadow the guest throws on the cloth: stand them a good stride in front of it and light the cloth as well as them. And green on the guest — a lime shirt, a yellow-green tie, a green lanyard — which will partly disappear; keep a plain dark cover-up in the booth and hand it over. The panel has those answers in a fold marked Hard to key?, so nobody has to remember them. Green screen is off until you switch it on, and costs the booth nothing while it is off.

Where the photos are

By default Pictures\OhSnap\<event>\<date>\HHMMSS-n.jpg. Everything about that is on the Output panel (Ctrl+Shift+O):

• Folder. Type a path, Choose one, or Default. Quotes, %USERPROFILE% and ~ are fine. Under the field OhSnap shows the exact folder it will write to, whether a probe file could be written there, the free space and the next file name. Test write leaves OhSnap-test-write.txt in the folder so you can find it in Explorer; Open folder opens it.
• Never lose a photo. If the folder cannot be written at the event (stick pulled, drive gone, read-only share), the photo goes to Pictures\OhSnap instead and the booth says so. Turn that off only if you really want a failed save to stop the booth.
• Subfolders. Event then date (default), date only, event only, or none.
• Also copy to. A second folder, for a USB stick or a network share. Best effort: if it is gone the photo still saves and the log says why.
• Format and name. JPEG (default), PNG or WebP; quality; longest edge; the screen's shape or the camera's. Under Advanced the file name is a template: {event} {date} {time} {n} {yyyy} {mm} {dd} {hh} {mi} {ss}. Characters Windows refuses become dashes.

Events

An event is a name for one job: a wedding, a fair, a Saturday night. The booth files every photo under the event it is on, so the next morning’s photos do not land in last night’s folder.

• Switch job. Add one in the Events panel, press Use this event, and the name shows in the drawer header from then on.
• Give it a folder of its own if its name is long or has punctuation in it. The folder is what you will see in Explorer.
• Its own counters. Each event counts its own photos and prints from the moment you made it, and you can set those counters back to zero without touching the photos. Removing an event from the list never removes a photo.
• Export the photos. When a job is over, press Export photos on its card. The booth asks where to put the file, then packs that event’s photos into one zip you can hand over on a stick, drop in a shared folder or attach to a message. A line under the card counts the photos as it goes, and when it is finished you get Show in folder and Open with Windows.
• Only photos go in, never your settings, your folder or the download password, and the file is only given its name once it is whole, so a zip you can see is a zip that opened properly. If Output is not filing photos by event, the panel says so plainly: everything in the photo folder goes in one export.

Gallery

Gallery (Ctrl+Shift+G) is the photo folder without leaving the booth.

• Today or all days. Today's photos newest first, with the count and size, or every photo in the folder by day (yesterday's event included). Open photo folder opens today's folder in Explorer.
• Select and clear. Click a photo to select it; Select all takes the lot. Delete selected asks once, then removes the photos with their raw frames and GIFs. The red x on a card deletes one.
• Per photo. Show in folder opens Explorer with that photo selected, for a USB stick or an email. Open hands the photo to whatever Windows already opens a .jpg with, usually the Photos app, so you can zoom in on a face or print it the Windows way without leaving the booth running; the booth never starts anything else of its own, it only asks Windows to open a file it saved itself. Print sends it to the printer set up on Output; a strip prints two-up if that is on.
• Bursts count as one photo per frame; a GIF set shows its still.
• Optional. Diagnostics, Admin drawer, untick Show the Gallery tab and the tab, its chord and its how-to are gone. The photos stay in the folder; Open photo folder on Output and Diagnostics still opens it.

Photo modes

Output panel, Photo mode. The countdown runs once; in every mode but Single the shots then follow each other with a "2 of 4" on screen and the shutter each time. Escape stops a set. Retake on the review screen retakes the whole set.

The classic booth, in one click

Two buttons at the top of Photo mode set everything a walk-up booth with one button needs. Everything they set stays adjustable underneath.

• Classic booth: 4 x 6 single. One press, one countdown, one photo, printed on 4 x 6.
• Classic booth: 2 x 6 strip of 3. One press starts three photos. Each one gets its own countdown with "1 of 3", "2 of 3", "3 of 3" under the numbers and a short pause between so people can change pose. The three land stacked on a strip over a footer for a logo or a text line, the strip prints by itself, and the booth goes back to waiting with no second press. It prints twice side by side on one 4 x 6 sheet, both halves the same, to cut down the middle. If the printer cuts 2 x 6 itself, pick 2 x 6 in strip as the paper under Printing and turn the two-up tick off.
• Countdown. Once, before the first photo (how sets worked before 0.13) or before every photo; Seconds before each later photo is the length of the countdown for photos 2 and up, and Seconds between shots is the pause before it.
• Between photos. Runs on its own: one press takes the whole set. Wait for a button press: after each photo the screen says "Press the button for photo 2 of 3" (your own words if you like, with {n} and {total}), and anything bound to Take a photo starts the next countdown: a key, a tap, a gamepad button, a serial button. If nobody presses within the wait (20 seconds unless you change it) the booth takes the photo anyway, finishes with the photos it has (a strip repeats the last pose in the empty cells), or cancels, as you chose, so a guest who walks off never leaves it stuck. It works the same for strips, bursts and GIFs. Escape cancels at any point, and a press during a countdown does what Button behaviour says.
• Little pictures that count the photos. Tick Show a row of little pictures that light up as each photo is taken: one picture per photo sits in a corner of the screen, grey and faint until that photo is taken, then full colour, and a last badge pops when the print is sent. Pick the pictures (little cameras, gold stars, candy hearts, flash bulbs, instant photos, paper sparklers, clay popcorn, or plain numbered circles), or show the photo just taken instead; pick the corner and the size. It is off until you tick it, it never appears on the photo, and it works for strips, bursts and GIFs. The row of little pictures below has all of it, including how it moves.
• Two strips on one 4 x 6: the same, or different. Strips side by side on one page: Every strip the same photos is the classic cut-in-half sheet, three photos printed twice. Each strip its own photos takes twice as many photos (six for a 3 pose strip) and fills the left strip and the right strip with different ones; the saved file is then the whole 4 x 6 sheet, so pick 4 x 6 as the paper.
• No screen facing the guests? Switch on the tick and the shutter under Look, Sounds (every sound is off until you do), so people hear the countdown and each photo being taken.

The four modes

• Single. One photo, as before.
• Burst. Two to twelve photos, each its own file. They share one time stamp and count -1, -2, -3. The review shows a contact sheet with the frames under it.
• The strip's footer. Under Footer and branding on the strip: a footer logo and a footer text line ({event} and {date} work) go inside the bare paper of the classic layouts, scaled to fit, on every strip of the page; no more nudging a watermark to 90% down. Any layout can have a footer: set its share of the height, and put it at the top if the client wants the brand first. The frame, watermark, overlays and text lines go once over the whole strip, or on every photo of it.
• Any grid on any paper. Besides the built-in layouts (2, 3 or 4 poses on a 2 x 6, the classic booth strips, 2 x 2, six or eight poses on a 4 x 6, one pose over a footer) pick Custom grid: columns (1 to 4), rows (1 to 8), the sheet's width and height in inches, and how many copies print side by side on the page (1 = the sheet is the page, 2 = a strip two-up, 3 or 4 for narrower strips on wider paper). Columns times rows is how many photos one press takes, and the "1 of 8" under the countdown, the little counting pictures and the preview all follow.
• Photo strip. One sheet: a 3-up or 4-up strip (2 x 6 in), a classic booth strip with 3 or 4 landscape poses over a footer of bare paper for a logo or a text line (a text line at about 90% down lands in it; black paper gives the old booth look), or a 2 x 2 sheet (6 x 4 in). Pick the layout from the live previews; set the gutter and the paper colour. The frame, watermark and text lines go once over the whole sheet, at the same percentages as on the screen, so a frame made for the screen's shape is cropped on a tall strip. Print a strip side by side on one sheet, to cut apart (on by default) prints any 2 x 6 strip two-up so one 4 x 6 cuts into two strips, for printers that cannot take 2 x 6 paper; pick 4 x 6 or Postcard as the paper.
• One photo in every cell. Photos on the strip: A new photo for every cell is the usual booth; One photo, repeated in every cell takes a single photo after one countdown and fills the whole layout with it, for a quick strip or a sheet of identical prints to hand round. There is no "1 of 3", no counting pictures and nothing to reshoot, and each strip its own photos does nothing, because there is only the one photo.
• Let the guest choose the layout. Off by default, and only for a booth whose guests can see and touch the screen. Tick the layouts to offer; the idle screen then shows a small sample of each along the bottom, with the layout chosen on the panel always among them. A tap picks one for that visit only: the number of photos, the count under the countdown, the saved sheet and the printed page all follow it, and the next guest starts from your layout again, whether the visit ended in a photo or in Escape. Nothing is written to the settings. Next strip layout and Previous strip layout can be bound to buttons on Inputs.
• Animated GIF. The shots become a looping GIF (frames per second, size and loop on the panel) saved next to a JPEG still of the first frame with the same name. The review plays the GIF; the still is what the Gallery shows and what prints.
• Reshoot one frame. Under Advanced: let the guest tap a frame on the review screen to shoot just that one again. The set is saved again afterwards.

The row of little pictures

A small row in a corner of the guest screen counts the photos off: one picture per photo, grey and faint until that photo is taken, then full colour, and a badge at the end when the sheet goes to the printer. It is off until you switch it on, it never appears on the photo, and it works for a burst, a strip and a GIF.

1. Switch it on. Output panel, Photo mode, with the mode on Burst, Photo strip or Animated GIF: tick Show a row of little pictures that light up as each photo is taken. A single photo has nothing to count, so the row is not offered there.
2. Watch the miniature. The row, as guests will see it is a small live copy of the real row, with every moment in it at once: a photo already taken, the one being shot now, the ones still to come and the printing badge. It is drawn from your pictures, your corner and your size, and redraws as you change anything. Play it again replays the moment a photo is taken.
3. Pick the pictures. Pictures shows eight sets, each as three thumbnails — a photo still to come, a photo taken, and the badge — so you can see a set before you pick it: Little cameras, Gold stars, Candy hearts, Flash bulbs, Instant photos, Paper sparklers, Clay popcorn and Plain numbered circles. Instant photos, Paper sparklers and Clay popcorn have two pictures each, one for a photo still to come and another for the photo once it is taken, so the row really changes at every shutter; the others use the same picture for both, faint until the photo is taken.
4. The word on the badge. The badge of Instant photos, Paper sparklers and Clay popcorn is printed blank on purpose and the word across it is typed by you. The word on the badge and Lettered in sit under the badge switch on Output, and the same word is used on the large Printing picture. Leave the box empty for PRINTING! Fourteen letters is the most that fits. A set whose badge is already a picture, and any picture of your own, carry no lettering.
5. Place it. Where: any of the four corners, or centred along the top or the bottom. Size, % of the screen height: 4 to 20. When a photo is taken, show: the picture in full colour, or the photo just taken. A last badge when the print is sent adds the printing picture to the end of the row.

Your own pictures in the row

Under the settings are three rows for the client's own artwork: A photo still to come, A photo taken and Printing badge. Each lists the branding files (the same files Branding, Media manages), with Replace to add a new file and use it straight away, and Back to bundled to undo. The thumbnail beside the row is exactly what the stage will show. Leave a row on Bundled picture, or delete its file later in the media manager, and the chosen set's picture is used again with nothing broken on the screen. A transparent PNG or WebP reads best.

How the row moves, and what it does after the set

Look panel, Pose tracker motion. The button at the foot of the tracker on Output jumps straight to it, and a button there jumps back. There is one setting per moment, and the first choice in every list is the plain classic look:

• The row arrives (appear at once, fade in one after another, rise, drop and land, dealt in like cards, pop up) and the row leaves (vanish, fade, sink away one by one, shrink, slide off, pop away).
• A photo still to come: grey and faint, grey with a cut-out edge, darkened with a lit edge, or breathing slowly. The drawing always stays readable, so guests can see what is coming.
• The photo being taken now: like the others, lifted and larger with the colour coming in, a slow heartbeat, a ring of light, a spotlight, or bobbing while it waits its turn.
• The moment it is taken: simply lights up, a squash-and-stretch bounce, a flash, a ring radiating out, a pop, a stamp from above, slapped on like a sticker, speed lines bursting out, or Hands over to the next one, which overlaps the photo just taken settling back with the next one waking up so the two read as one movement rather than two. A photo already taken then floats gently, stays still, breathes, drifts its shadow, catches a shine now and then, or takes A line draws on to the next photo, which joins the photos already taken into a chain, drawing left to right, and leaves the line drawn; the last photo draws on to the printing badge once the sheet is sent. Both are off until you pick them, both follow How much it moves, and with movement off the chain is simply there, fully drawn.
• How much it moves: Subtle (how a new install starts), Lively, or None: states only, no movement, which keeps grey, lit and printing exactly as they are and moves nothing. Motion off under Readability, and Windows' own reduce-motion setting, do the same.
• After the set: Stay lit until the booth is ready again, Go as soon as the last photo is taken, or Stay on the waiting screen, greyed, until the next press, which leaves the last guest's row up as a hint to the next one.
• A sound as each photo is taken: silent unless you pick one. The built-in ticks (beep, soft blip, woodblock, arcade, chime, drum) or your own WAV or MP3, at the volume under Sounds.

Preview the tracker plays a set of three on the stage with the drawer stepped aside, whether or not the row is switched on, and Play the sound tries the sound on its own.

On a screen stood on its end, the row steps up out of the way while the photo is on the review screen, so it never covers Retake and Keep or the filmstrip. It drops back to the corner you chose as soon as the booth is ready for the next guest.

The large Printing picture

When the sheet goes to the printer a picture can fill the middle of the screen for a moment, so a queue can see the print is on its way before the booth goes back to waiting. Output panel, Photo mode: tick A large Printing picture when the sheet goes to the printer. Every mode offers it, a single photo included.

• Picture. The tracker's own badge follows whichever set the row uses, or pick another set's badge. Or your own picture takes a branding file instead, with the same Replace and Back to bundled.
• Size 20 to 200 % of its normal size, and Across and Down to put it anywhere on the screen rather than the middle.
• It comes in with and and leaves with are the countdown's own entrances and exits (pop, grow, bounce, drop, flip, spin, focus, slam, elastic, slide; fade, shrink, blur, float up, fall, spin, cut). Seconds on screen: 1 to 10.
• Preview the Printing picture plays it on the stage even while the tick is off.

It never reaches the photo or the print, and the next guest's countdown takes it away at once, so a slow printer cannot leave it over somebody else's face. A picture of yours that has been deleted quietly falls back to the badge.

Your own countdown numbers

Look panel, Your own countdown pictures: one row per number of the countdown, counting down from the seconds you set (up to ten rows), each taking a picture from the branding files in place of that number. Replace adds a file and uses it; Back to bundled returns the number to the sticker set chosen under Countdown pictures above, or to the plain text when no set is chosen, in which case the preview is empty. The pictures take the countdown's motion and size but not its colour or font, the numbers never reach the photo, and a file deleted later puts that number back to the sticker or the text with nothing broken on screen.

Printing

Output panel, Printing. Install the printer in Windows first; OhSnap lists what Windows has.

• Print: Off, a Print button on the review screen for the guest, or Every photo, automatically.
• Printer, paper, fit, copies. Leave the printer on System default or pick one. Paper: 4x6 to start with, 2x6 strip, Postcard, 5x7, 6x8, A4, A5, A6, Letter, 3.5x5, 8x10, or a custom size in millimetres. Fit: whole photo with white edges, or fill the paper and crop. Orientation follows the photo unless you force it under Advanced.
• Print a test page sends a real pattern: printer and paper named, four corner blocks, a crosshair and a bar that must measure 100 mm. If the bar is short or the corners are missing, fix paper size or scaling in the driver before the doors open. Print the last photo reprints the most recent shot. A 3-up or 4-up strip prints two-up when Photo mode says so.
• A button for print. Inputs panel, action Print: in review it prints that photo, on the idle screen it prints the last one again. Handy for a second copy on request.
• If it does not print. A saved printer that is unplugged shows in red on the panel. A job that gets no answer from the driver in 60 seconds is reported as failed; look for a driver dialog on the desktop. Borderless needs the driver set to borderless as well; OhSnap asks for zero margins but the driver decides. Canon SELPHY: pick Postcard as the paper. Every failed job is a line in Diagnostics.
• The Windows "printing" toast. Windows and some printer status monitors pop a notification on every job and no app can stop that. Turn it off in Settings, Notifications, for OhSnap and for the printer's status monitor, or switch on Focus Assist for the event.

Making the print fit

Every printer and driver places the picture a little differently, and a dye-sub that cuts 4 x 6 into two 2 x 6 strips shows every millimetre. Output panel, Printing, Print fit is where you line it up. Work in this order, with the paper and ribbon you will use at the event:

1. Pick a profile. One button sets paper, fit, strips across the page, margins and the cut guide: Sinfonia CS2, strips cut by the printer (the Color Stream CS2, which Windows lists as Sinfonia CHC-S6145, on its 4 x 6 media: two strips side by side at 300 dpi, and the printer's own cutter halves the sheet once its Print Size is "4x6 in (split)"), Dye-sub, 4 x 6, strips two-up (DNP DS40, DS-RX1, QW410, Mitsubishi, HiTi, Citizen), Dye-sub, 2 x 6 media, Canon SELPHY postcard, Inkjet or laser, A4 / Letter. Each one then tells you what to set in the driver. Everything stays adjustable. A printer OhSnap knows by name (a Sinfonia CS2, a DNP, a SELPHY) is offered its profile right under the printer list the moment Windows shows it, one press, and the self-test's printer line says whether it was pressed and which driver setting to check.
2. Print a test page. With a strip layout active it shows a box where each strip will land (LEFT STRIP, RIGHT STRIP, or STRIP 1 to 4), dashed cut lines, a millimetre ruler along two edges counting out from the middle, and an upright bar that must measure 100 mm.
3. Print a sample strip. The real layout with your gutters, footer, frame, logo and text, filled with drawn stand-in poses numbered 1, 2, 3. It is not saved as a photo and nobody has to stand in front of the camera.
4. Nudge, and print again. Scale 50 to 150 %, Move right and Move down up to 30 mm either way (measure the error on the print and type it in), Gap between strips 0 to 10 mm, Rotate in quarter turns, a hairline cut guide, and Strips across the page: Automatic (two when the two-up tick is on), or 1 to 4. The small drawing of the page beside the fields moves as you type: blue is the picture, red is anything pushed off the paper, dashes are cut guides. Reset fit puts every nudge back to neutral and leaves the paper alone.

Papers: 4x6 (what a new booth starts on), 2x6 strip, Postcard, 5x7, 6x8, A4, A5, A6, Letter, 3.5x5, 8x10, and Custom size: any sheet from 25 to 500 mm, typed in millimetres. With two different strips on one sheet the saved picture is already the whole 4 x 6, so it prints once: the cut guide still runs down its middle, and the gap does nothing because the two strips are one picture.

Printing problems: what fixes what

In the app: Output, Printing, the yellow Printing problems button. The window starts from what you see on the paper (nothing comes out; tiny, in a corner; white bands; an edge cut off; off-centre; sideways; too many or too few; colours; a printer that vanishes; what only Windows can change). Each one says why, carries the settings that fix it, saved as you change them, and the line at the top is what Windows says about the printer at that moment: ready, offline, out of paper, door open. The tools in it:

• Save what OhSnap sends as a PDF: the exact page, on the Desktop. PDF right and paper wrong means the driver is changing it.
• Open Printing preferences, Printer properties, the print queue, Windows printer settings: straight to the driver. Press Ctrl+Shift+F or Alt+Tab if OhSnap covers the window.
• Print through the Windows dialog: the same page with Windows' own dialog in front, so any driver option can be tried for one print. What works there, set as the default in Printing preferences: silent prints use the defaults.
• Copy print settings for support: every print setting, the printer's status and the last print lines of the log, on the clipboard.

New settings under Advanced: colour or black and white, the resolution asked of the driver (most dye-subs want 300), how long to wait for the driver (20 to 600 s, 60 to start), and sending a refused job again up to three times. A job that timed out is never sent again, because it may still come out.

First table: things OhSnap fixes, all on Output, Printing.

Second table: things only Windows or the printer driver can fix. No app can set these for you. Open Settings, Bluetooth and devices, Printers and scanners, the printer, Printing preferences.

Share to phone (QR)

Output panel, Share to phone. Off until you tick Show a QR on the review screen. Then every review shows a QR beside the photo with Scan to save this to your phone under it. The guest scans it, the phone opens a page with their photo and a big Save button, and that is all. No app, no account, no email address, and the photo never goes to the internet: the phone fetches it straight from the booth over Wi-Fi.

• The status line says Running at and the booth's address, or why it is not running (no network, or the port is taken). Check again asks once more.
• Test with the newest photo makes a link for the latest photo and shows its QR right in the panel. Scan it with your own phone before the doors open.
• Link lifetime. A link works for an hour by default, then shows "not found". Links also stop when OhSnap closes. Each photo gets its own random link; nobody can guess another guest's. A phone that keeps asking for links that are not there is told Too many tries. Wait a minute, then scan the code again. until it stops, so guessing gets nowhere; a phone that asks for a real photo is never held up by it.
• Under Advanced. The port (0 picks a free one each start; set a fixed one if a firewall only lets one through) and an address override for a laptop with several networks where OhSnap picks the wrong one.
• The first time, Windows asks whether OhSnap may use the network. Allow Private networks. If you clicked it away, allow OhSnap in Windows Security, Firewall, Allow an app.
• The QR obeys the review. It goes when the guest keeps, retakes or the review time runs out, and it follows High contrast, Big buttons and the Look panel's Motion switch. No logo on it.

No venue Wi-Fi? Use the laptop's own. On the booth laptop open Settings, Network and internet, Mobile hotspot, and switch it on. Windows shows a network name and password: put them on a card by the booth. Guests join that network, scan the QR and save; OhSnap picks the hotspot address (192.168.137.1) by itself. It works in a field with no signal, and guests' phones never see the venue network. If a phone cannot open the link, it is almost always on a different Wi-Fi from the booth, or on mobile data only.

Button behaviour

Inputs panel, Button behaviour. What the big button does when the booth is busy: during the countdown it is ignored, cancels, or restarts the countdown; during the review it is ignored, keeps the photo now, retakes, or prints and keeps. The cooldown after a photo is here too. Per button, each chip has pulse or hold and a repeat guard in milliseconds.

Swiping the review photo. On a touch screen the guest can swipe the photo instead of reaching for a button: to the right to keep it, to the left to take it again. The photo follows the finger and slides back where it was if they let go too soon, so a stray touch never costs anyone their picture. A short line under the picture tells them what to do, and you can retype that line under Look, Words on the guest screen. The switch is on Output, under Countdown and review, and it is off until you turn it on. Keep, Retake and Print, tapping a frame of a strip to reshoot it, the QR card and the big button all work exactly as before, whether swiping is on or off.

Before the event

The day before, on the laptop that goes to the venue:

1. Latest version. Diagnostics, Check for update. Install a newer one over the old; settings and photos stay.
2. The set-up. Import the preset if it was built on another machine, then walk the Help quick start until every step is ticked.
3. A real test. A photo with the real camera, on the real screen, with the real button. Open the folder and look at the file. If printing, a test page and one photo.
4. Windows. Settings, System, Power: screen never off, never sleep, on the plug and on battery. Windows Update: pause it for the week. Notifications: off, or Focus Assist on. Close Teams, OBS and anything else that might grab the camera. Volume up if the tick and shutter matter.
5. Disk space. Output shows the free space under the folder. A day of 4K JPEGs is a few gigabytes; a burst booth much more.
6. No internet at the venue? OhSnap needs none: the installer is complete, the fonts and art are inside it, and the update check gives up quietly. Try it before the day: Wi-Fi off, start OhSnap, take a single photo and a strip, print each once, unplug and replug the camera, then restart the laptop still offline and do it again.
7. Pack. The button, its cable, a spare USB cable for the camera, the power supply, the printer's paper and ink, and the venue card printed: one sheet with the start-up order, the keys and what to do when the camera, the printer or the button stops.

At the venue: plug in power first, then the camera and the button, then start OhSnap. One test photo, close the panel, walk away.

Is this booth ready?

On the Diagnostics tab there is Is this booth ready? and a button that runs seventeen quick checks. Nothing is printed, nothing is photographed and nobody at the guest screen sees a thing. Run it when you arrive at a venue, and again if something starts behaving oddly.

• What it looks at. Where the photos are being saved and whether the booth can really write there, how much room is left on the drive and roughly how many photos that is, how many have been taken today, the printers Windows can see and whether the one the booth is set to is still there and ready, the camera and the picture coming from it, this machine and its versions, whether the booth starts by itself with Windows, whether this site can be reached and what the newest version is, your settings, and the clock.
• Which drive. The room-on-the-drive line names the volume it read: a drive letter such as C:\, or the root of a network share. On a mapped drive or a USB stick that is what lets you hold the figure up against Explorer and see a wrong one as wrong.
• What a line says. Good, Look at this, Wrong or Skipped, then one sentence about what it found, and, whenever it is not a Good, one sentence about what to do. Skipped means the check did not apply to this machine — a printer that does not tell Windows what it is, for instance — not that something is wrong; and a line that says it did not answer in time is worth running again.
• Sending it to us. Copy the result puts the whole answer on the clipboard as plain text, with no passwords and no photos in it: paste it into an email. Export diagnostics, on the same tab, puts the same result in the zip as selftest.txt, so send the zip instead if you were asked for one.
• No internet at the venue? Only the check that asks this site needs it. That line says so, and nothing else stops working.

When it fails at the event

• On one sheet. The venue card is the short version of this list, made to be printed and taped inside the booth.
• No camera picture. Cameras panel, Refresh list, pick it again. Close anything else using the camera (Teams, OBS). Unplug and replug the USB cable, then refresh again. The status line names the camera that would not start and why; the Device list stays pickable even when the saved camera is gone.
• DSLR or capture card. An HDMI capture card that Windows lists as a camera (Elgato Cam Link and the like) appears under Device like a webcam. Set the DSLR to clean HDMI output, turn off its auto power-off, close the card maker's own app, and match Requested size to what the camera sends (usually 1920 x 1080). The photo is a frame of that video, not a full-resolution DSLR still.
• Camera dead for good. Set the background to a still. The booth keeps running and the admin still opens; the photo will be the composite without a live frame.
• Button does nothing. Inputs panel shows the last event seen. If nothing appears when you press, the device is not talking. Try another port, then bind the keyboard Space as a fallback.
• Stuck on a screen. Escape cancels the current snap. Ctrl+Shift+F drops to a window so you can see what is happening.
• Everything is wrong. Diagnostics, Export config, then Reset to defaults. Import the export later.
• The disk is full, or the folder is read-only. The booth says which in plain words rather than an error code: Snap failed, and then the disk is full, no permission to write there or that location is read-only. It keeps running either way. Clear space or pick another folder on Output; the exact path and the code are in the log.
• A setting that will not save. On a full or read-only disk a change made in the drawer cannot be written, and the drawer says so once, while it is open: The settings could not be saved, and the reason. It is never shown over the guest screen. Until it is fixed, the booth keeps the settings it had rather than a set nothing on disk agrees with.
• The settings file goes bad. Every good save leaves a copy of itself behind. A config.json that has been hand-edited into nonsense, or truncated by a power cut, is set aside as config.json.corrupt. and a date, and the booth comes back on that last good copy rather than on factory settings. It costs the last change, not the evening, and the log says so. Look over the drawer before the doors open.
• The camera goes black in the middle of the event. Wait a few seconds first: the booth tries a camera that has stopped again by itself, every 5 seconds to begin with, then less often, up to every 30, and stops when the picture is back. A cable that was pulled and pushed back in needs nothing from you. It never restarts the camera in the middle of a photo, and it waits while the Cameras panel is open so it does not fight the choice you are making there. Still black after a minute: Cameras, Restart camera (it also reads the device list again from nothing), then another USB port. A guest who presses the button in the second or two while the camera is being opened is not turned away: the press is held and the countdown starts the moment the picture is there.
• A capture card freezes on one picture. The DSLR went to sleep or the HDMI lead moved, and the card keeps sending the last frame it had. The booth notices 5 seconds without a new frame and restarts the camera by itself; the log says frozen feed. Wake the DSLR, turn off its auto power-off and run it from mains.
• A camera plugged in while you are looking at the Cameras panel appears in the list by itself; so do gamepads and serial ports on Inputs, Devices.
• The printer was off or unplugged. The booth reads the printer list again before the next print. If the saved printer is still missing it says so by name instead of queueing a job that goes nowhere, and the first print after it is back goes out as normal.
• It keeps happening. Diagnostics, Export diagnostics, and email us the file. It is one zip, saved to the Desktop as OhSnap-diagnostics- and the date and time, with the settings, the log, the versions of OhSnap and Windows, the camera's state, the printers Windows lists, the screens, and the names, sizes and dates of the last ten photos. The admin PIN and anything that looks like a password or a token are taken out, and there are no photos in it. The Camera line on the same panel (device, size, frame rate, last error, retries, age of the last frame) is the one to screenshot if a zip is too much. The log looks after itself: it is kept to 2 MB, one file and the one before it, so a booth that logs all night is never what fills the drive.

Letting the booth update itself

On the Diagnostics tab there is Update this booth by itself. Switch it on and type the download password once — the same one you use on the download page — and the booth will fetch each new version in the background, check it against the checksum this site published, and keep it until a moment when nobody is using it.

• When it installs. Choose whether it installs when you shut the booth down, or overnight between two hours you pick. It will never install anything while a guest is at the screen.
• The password. Kept by Windows itself, not written into any file you could read, and it never leaves in an export, a preset or the log.
• When it cannot. If the venue’s internet is down, if the password has changed, or if a download arrives damaged, nothing happens at all: the booth keeps running and the panel tells you what it last tried.
• A download that broke off is picked up where it stopped rather than started again, so a venue whose Wi-Fi drops halfway through still finishes. If the site has put out a newer version since, the part already on disk is dropped and the new one fetched whole. The checksum is still the only thing that says the finished file is the right one.

This is Windows only, and if the machine has no safe place to keep a password the panel says so and the feature stays off.

Locking the admin panel

At an unattended booth a guest with a keyboard can find Ctrl+Shift+A. Diagnostics, Venue, Set a PIN: four to eight digits, typed twice so a slip does not lock you out. From then on every admin chord, Quit and windowed mode show a keypad first. Tap the digits, click them or type them, then OK or Enter; Escape cancels. Three wrong tries lock the keypad for 30 seconds, and it counts down on screen. Once the right PIN is in, the drawer stays open for you, switching panels with chords as usual, until it closes; the next chord asks again. Escape on the stage still cancels a snap without a PIN.

The PIN belongs to the laptop: an exported preset never carries it, and importing one keeps the PIN already set. Forgotten it? The PIN is in config.json in the app's settings folder (the path is on Diagnostics); delete the pin value there with OhSnap closed. Remove PIN on the same fieldset turns it off.

Venue settings

Diagnostics, Venue, for a booth that runs all day without you. Photos per day stops the booth after that many photos (0 means no limit): the button does nothing and the waiting screen shows your message, That's a wrap! Thanks everyone. unless you write another, in the idle prompt's own font and colour. The line above it shows today's count; the limit starts again at midnight, or at once if you raise it. Close this drawer after closes an admin drawer left open for that many minutes without a click or key (10 by default, 0 for never), with a warning 30 seconds before, so a forgotten drawer does not sit over the stage all afternoon. Start OhSnap when Windows starts brings the booth back by itself after a power cut or a Windows restart. The watchdog needs no switch: if the booth screen stops answering for 30 seconds, OhSnap reloads it, and Diagnostics shows the last heartbeat and how many reloads there have been since the app started.