GIF and Boomerang Photo Booth Modes

A still gets saved to the camera roll. A loop gets posted. If you want guests marketing your booth for you, give them something that moves.

What each format is for

• The strip is the keepsake — printed, stuck on a fridge, mailed to a grandmother.
• The boomerang GIF is the post. It loops forever, needs no sound, and works in a story without anyone tapping play.
• The short video is the one guests send to the group chat, where a GIF would lose quality.

Enabling all three costs you nothing at the booth — they render from the same session while the next group is already posing.

Turn them on

1. Open BoothLab on the iPad and pick Photobooth.
2. Open Settings and enable GIFs and, if you want it, the short video option. These are device-wide switches, not per-event ones — turning them on affects every event on that iPad.
3. Run a test session. The extra formats appear on the guest sharing screen alongside the strip, and upload to Dropbox or Google Drive with the rest.

Getting a loop that reads well

• Direct the motion. "Do the same thing three times" beats "be spontaneous" — a loop is only satisfying when the end meets the beginning.
• Props help enormously. Anything thrown, waved or spun gives the loop a subject.
• Light it properly. Motion at low light means motion blur, and a blurry loop reads as a mistake rather than a style.
• Keep the backdrop still. A loop against a moving dance floor fights itself.

Where the 360 booth fits

If a client wants motion as the headline rather than the bonus, that is the 360 booth: an iPhone on a spinner arm shooting 240 fps slow motion with a reverse effect at the end, which is its own boomerang finish. The GIF and video options described here belong to the classic booth on the iPad — a second format for guests who came to pose, not to spin.

Give guests something that loops

GIFs, short videos and printed strips from the same session. Download BoothLab free on the App Store.