DIY: Building a Wedding Photo Booth with a Mac and a Printer

I’m documenting my steps in building a nice and simple wedding photo booth with just a mac, (optionally a nice webcam) and a photo printer.

I’m surprised that there’s no polished way of doing this right now. The best app I’ve found is called SparkBooth, which costs $59 and is a really badly designed Adobe Air app and requires using of an older version of Adobe Air to have the camera take pictures in the right aspect ratio. 

So here’s what I have, and how I will make it work:

  • A mac with Mac OS X Mountain Lion
  • A Logitech webcam
  • A Canon photo printer
1. Get to the Pictures folder of Photo Booth. 
In finder, go to Pictures -> Photo Booth Library, right click Photo Booth Library and select “Show Package Contents“ 
2. Create a folder action to copy Photo Booth pictures to a new folder, so we can play the slideshow

To be continued as I figure it out.

A List of Retina Display Ready Websites

I’m going to document a list of nice looking Retina display ready websites for those who have the new Retina MacBook Pro. 

Apple

http://www.apple.com

This one is a no brainer.

Dropbox for Mobile

http://www.dropbox.com/mobile

While their main site is not ready yet, this page is looking sharp. 

Tumblr

Part of Tumblr is ready, except their main logo. 

http://www.tumblr.com

Github is now Retina ready

http://www.github.com

Cultured Code - The creators of the famous Things to do app

http://www.culturedcode.com

Pinterest

http://www.pinterest.com

MacBook Pro with Retina Display Review and Thoughts

First of all, long time no see my readers. I’ve not been kept up to date with my blogging effort. I will try to improve on this and blog more in the future on gadgets, tech industry, trends, thoughts, and deals. 

So I’ve ordered a new Macbook Pro with Retina display after it was announced June 11th of this year. I was hopeful but skeptical during the day of the WWDC keynote presentation. First of all, this is the first WWDC announcement after the passing of my all time hero late CEO Steve Jobs. I wasn’t sure if Apple is heading the right direction without his vision.

What I knew this time, is that the WWDC announcement was going to be about developers, which means it’s going to be about the “trucks”. Steve Jobs once said during an interview at the 8th All Things D Conference that in the “Post-PC” era, iPads are like cars and Macs are like trucks. What he meant was that

  • Tablet devices such as the iPad are what most people will use, to get from point A to point B. Some good examples would be browsing the internet, watching videos, and listening to music. 
  • Laptops and desktop computers are going to be reserved for professionals to do heavy lifting works such as graphic design, programming, or moviemaking. 

You see the connections here? WWDC keynotes are targeting developers, they need their trucks to create apps for the rest of the world to use. So the expectations on hardware this year was new MacBooks, iMacs, and Mac Pros. Turned out that was the case, at least on the MacBook front.

Tim Cook first announced spec-bumped MacBook Airs and MacBook Pros with Intel’s new chip architecture “Ivy Bridge” and USB 3.0 ports. Just as I was disappointed to hear that the updated MacBook Pros still having the same casing, the MacBook line up on the presentation moved to the left and revealed a new laptop in the family covered in black cloth. It was epic, here we’ve got it - the Next Generation MacBook Pro. As Leo Laporte calls it, the “MacBook Elite”. Thinner, lighter, more beautiful, and more powerful, my jaw dropped wide open. I haven’t had this feeling during an Apple announcement for a long time, I wanted it so badly.

Here’s a highlight of what’s special about this new MacBook:

  • The first computer with a Retina display. As a designer, for good for for worse, this is a big deal for me. I will talk about designing for retina in a separate post.
  • No built-in superdrive, Firewire, and ethernet port. This is a computer for people willing to give up the old and embrace the future.
  • 2 Thunderbolt ports, 2 USB 3.0 ports. Super fast connectivities for future proof. 
  • “Overclocked” nVidia Kelpler GeForce GT 650M running at 900Mhz. For once, Apple packed a top of the line mobile GPU, to power all the pixels of the retina display of course. Diablo 3 is finally smooth as butter in highest settings.
  • Asymmetrical fans for quieter operation. A new way of thinking, a new kind of fan to improve the noise level? I’m sold.

I will continue this story once I get home…