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Holiday Party: Photo Booth Edition

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What better time to geek out a little than when setting up for a social occasion filled with family and friends? For our 2015 company holiday party held in Royal Oak, Michigan, the motion graphics and human resources departments teamed up to create a custom photo booth experience for everyone to enjoy. Styles were discussed, props were collected, and development was started in Quartz Composer (a visual programming tool created by Apple).

Building a photo booth

Using an Eyefi mobiPRO card to wirelessly transmit photos as they’re taken, the system was designed to collect a batch of only the newest images, then load them one at a time at specific intervals. Once loaded from disk, the photo was processed and sent to an animation system using sample & hold patches. This gave us access to both the current and previous image, making transitions easy and efficient. Multiple animation options were created; we picked our favourites and then set them up to cycle periodically.

Sure, that part may be boring to a few, but the truly fun part is seeing everyone’s photos animating across the wall. The event was a huge success, and we all enjoyed the photo booth. In the spirit of the holidays, we’re posting our setup and the Quartz project so you can have as much fun as we did!

Fair warning: it helps if you’re already familiar with Quartz Composer.

Gear we used:

  • Samsung NX500
    • It offers both a flip up screen and highly customisable multi-shot timer, but any camera with similar options will do.
  • Eyefi mobiPRO card
    • Easy solution for transferring via local wifi network without having to connect computers and cameras manually each time the power cycles.
  • Sturdy tripod
    • People will bump into it. A lot.
  • Lights
    • We used our studio lights, but anything with a bulb can work.
  • Props
    • Thrift shops are the perfect place to find picture frames, and party stores have plenty of hilarious dress-up options.
  • Mac Pro with Quartz Composer installed
    • Any Macbook Pro or iMac made in the past 5 years should work great.
  • Projector
    • Rendered against a black background, the animations work well on a wall, but TVs and computer screens are perfectly fine too.

Download VectorformPhotoBooth.qtz

Setup:

  • Configure your Eyefi card, Wifi enabled camera, or similar solution. Even USB tethering will work if the images are automatically saved to a specific folder.
  • Download Quartz Composer from the Apple Developers site. It’s free to sign up, and once you’re logged in just look for the latest “Graphics Tools for Xcode” download. Copy it to your Applications directory and you’re ready to go.
  • Open the VectorformPhotoBooth.qtz file in Quartz Composer and customise the settings by pressing “command-i” in the viewer. It’ll give you options for source directory and various durations. The defaults should work perfectly for an Eyefi setup.
    • If you have a lot of extra photos, you may want to specify a single sub-directory instead of the entire Eyefi folder.
  • For best performance, close the editor window and make the viewer fullscreen.

 

Happy Holidays, and have fun!

 

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