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I'm looking for suggestions and advice on event photography software designed to help photographers sell prints on site using viewing kiosks and a main printing computer, hopefully staffed by one person.

Currently, I use one computer, adobe bridge, and photoshop. I find the bottle neck is finding images for customers to purchase while others wait in line.

Can you help?

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4 Answers 4

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Depending on what you're looking for, here's a few ideas.

  1. Have some sort of a display showing your images separate from the purchasing computer. It could be a laptop that's just showing pictures in some kind of a screensaver mode, a DVD player with a USB port that is cycling through pictures, or any other mechanism you can come up with, there's a bunch of them.
  2. Pre-print thumbnails of the photos you are selling, get them laminated or something similar, and hand them to the people who are next in line, so they can take a look at them quickly. Make sure to have some kind of numbering system so that you can find it quickly in the computer.

Neither of these is a software solution per say, but they should both help with your biggest bottleneck, and at low cost.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ it needs to be software that allows users to select photos for purchase that goes into an order queue which is then processed upon payment. \$\endgroup\$
    – Canon Gangsta
    Jan 18, 2011 at 15:48
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    \$\begingroup\$ @Canon Gangsta: does it? Why? This seems like a very useful suggestion. Even if you want a kiosk-based ordering system, having a way for your customers to get image ID numbers before they get to the kiosk, and then typing them in to verify, makes sense as being a useful thing to me... Though there are other possibilities... (more to come in an answer from me, hopefully, when I'm at a real computer.) \$\endgroup\$
    – lindes
    Jan 18, 2011 at 16:56
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I don't know what your budget is like, but one option that I think would potentially work very well, and have a good "wow factor", though I'm sure would be expensive, would be a custom solution from the likes of Perceptive Pixel. Their large multi-touch displays could surely be a great way for your customers to find photos of themselves (and/or their friends), and perhaps even place an order through the interface, to be confirmed and finalized by your staff member.

Another option, too, though I don't know if it's readily extant/available, would be to have software that does face detection to match (via a webcam or similar) the person walking up to the kiosk with the database of the images you recorded. Getting false positives or negatives would potentially be a concern, here, but it sure has the potential to make things quick -- and face detection has been advancing greatly in recent years. I imagine the Perceptive Pixel folks might be up for implementing such a solution, too.

If you're not familiar with Perceptive Pixel, one good introduction would be the talk Jeff Han (founder) gave at TED in 2006. It's an interesting talk, with some interesting ideas about the future of user interfaces. If he's the kind of person you'd want doing your kiosk, then Perceptive Pixel is surely the way to go.

Note: I am in no way associated with Perceptive Pixel -- I don't work there, I'm not a customer, I don't own stock -- I just have followed them somewhat since first running across the TED talk listed above, and thought of their solutions as being a good fit for what you're describing -- provided you can afford it, at any rate. :)

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Here are a couple of software packages that I'm aware of:

Express Digital Darkroom is the 'big dog' in the market, and it is priced accordingly.

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  • \$\begingroup\$ Krasbit looks like it provides features close to what I'm looking for. \$\endgroup\$
    – Canon Gangsta
    Jan 21, 2011 at 18:59
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I know this is an old post, but there are professional solutions out there that do exactly what the OP is asking for. There are three main products that make up the largest portion of onsite event photography software: 5 Minute Photo, Photo Parata, and EPS. If you have lines of people and want them to view and order images onsite using one or more viewing stations, then you should look at least at these three.

Express Digital may be called event software, but I'm not sure that it is what the OP is asking for. Express Digital is, oftentimes, used in conjunction with these types of software, it does not replace them.

DISCLAIMER: I am the owner of 5 Minute Photo, but remained un-biased in my post by listing the next two largest of our competitors. Just want to clarify and add to the post so that others may find relevant information about their options in the onsite event photography industry.

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    \$\begingroup\$ Stay away from 5 Minute Photo!!!! The owner will rip you off!!! When he does finally offer you a refund, you will get a check in the mail, then when you deposit it into your bank account you will think that is great, I finally have my money back. The bad news is, a few days later, you will get the check in the mail again, this time it will be from your bank and it will have NSF stamped on the front. You will try to call 5 Minute Photo, but they will not answer your calls or return your emails. After knowing this, if you still decide to purchase 5 Minute Photo, do not say that you were not warn \$\endgroup\$
    – user13363
    Nov 3, 2012 at 4:33
  • \$\begingroup\$ I am a photographer based in Oklahoma and have used 5 minute photo for several years. I have always found David @ 5MP to be helpful. I am sorry for Mike's experience and hope that it was either a misunderstanding or that 5MP made it right, but just wanted to throw in my 2 cents - 5MP has been great software and their staff has been a pleasure to work with. \$\endgroup\$
    – user17476
    Mar 1, 2013 at 4:43

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