Pocketbooth Photo Booth 4+

Great app! Just missing countdown feature

I bought the app along with the party mode option and have been playing with it before we take it live for out wedding. I'm thrilled to have a viable option to diy our own booth versus renting one for hundreds! It's printed flawlessly and I love how it's customizable. The one thing missing is an on screen countdown to let you know when the picture is about to take. Is there an option to show it that I'm just missing? If not, could you add that feature in?

Developer Response ,

Hi Bethy. Thanks for the kind words. We don't plan on adding a countdown only because the historic booths this app is based on didn't have a countdown. But we're not just being stubborn - we think the lack of a countdown actually added to the charm of the old booths and helped catch subjects in unguarded moments. The original booths did have a red light behind the glass that would turn on as if to say "freeze! photo coming". Our app dutifully replicates the behavior of that light. Hope that helps!

Limited

I am someone who never pays for apps. I bought this app for an upcoming Halloween party where I set up a diy “photo booth” with props and a backdrop.

Unfortunately, based on the limited options in the app I wasted my money and won’t be using this app for the party. I wanted to be able to turn my device in order to get a layout profile for the photo strips so that I could fit 2-3 people in a shot and still be close enough to read the words on my props. With this app you can’t do that really. There is no setting for layout so when you manually turn your device to the side it’ll take the photo strip but then it shows up in the viewer upside down which means guests would have to flip the device every time to see if they like it or not.

Since each photo is so small on the strip it also doesn’t make for high quality photos because if you edit the photos later on (crop etc.) you can’t blow them up without distorting them (say if you like one photo from a strip).

I do like that you can share right from the app and I like the photo strip idea but for a paid app I should be able to select layout. Frankly the app admin responses to similar concerns are really snobby sounding and inflexible. I get that you want it to be “traditional” but listen to your customers and what they need.

Mixed bag

4 hours into a trial with this app, and to this point it is very much a mixed bag with most features working as advertised, but cannot MMS to a mobile number. Can email photo strips just fine but cannot MMS. With virtually zero online instruction other than a few FAQ, it is trial and error. Grateful that Tim has responded but regret a lack of progress getting this resolved.

Have reviewed iPad settings and not seeing anything amiss.

I worked in tech support many years and appreciate the frustrations on both ends when things do not work as advertised.

Update: our goal is for attendees to be able to send images to their mobile devices using a mobile number. Tech support has just given a well-detailed explanation of why the iOS is working against our goal, so it seems clear that this is an iOS issue and not an issue with the app.

My suggestion is that the developers give more info on the front end to create realistic expectations and avoid frustration, but otherwise I do appreciate the effort.

Developer Response ,

Hi Tam, I know we emailed extensively following your purchase of this app, but I wanted to leave a few notes here for future buyers.

We give as much information as we think is helpful on the front end, but we are always learning. The particular issue you encountered was the first time we saw it and as a result there was nothing in our FAQ. We have since added information about it in the FAQ.

Because there is no way we can possibly anticipate every scenario our customers will run into, we pride ourselves on prompt, friendly, and thorough customer support via email, which I believe you benefitted from.

At the end of the day, the issue you encountered is due to MMS on the iPad being reliant on pairing a phone (and its number) to the iPad in order to send text messages to non-iOS devices. This is a limitation of the iPad.

You say that "most features" worked as advertised - were there other problems you encountered? We'd love to know about them.