Hotfolder Prints Help

Overview

Hotfolder Prints monitors a folder for new images and automatically prints the using the same formatting and layout options as the photobooth applications from Breeze Systems DSLR Remote Pro for Windows, NKRemote and PSRemote). This can include the resizing, cropping and rotation of images and the addition of logos, captions and watermarks.

Uses include:

Uploading images to social networking sites

Hotfolder Prints can automatically format one or more images and then upload them to social networking sites by email.  Please see the section on "Uploading to photo sharing and social networking sites" for more information.

Event photography

Hotfolder Prints could be setup to monitor a folder at an event where the photographer takes a series of pictures and downloads them to the PC (e.g. by shooting tethered with one of our camera control products or using an Eye-Fi card to download to the PC wirelessly). At the end of each set of photos the photographer or an assistant could then review the images with the client (e.g. using our BreezeBrowser Pro software), select the best ones and then copy them to the folder being monitored by Hotfolder Prints. The layout options in Hotfolder Prints can be used to print one or more photos one one sheet of paper together with logos and contact information as required.

Formatting photobooth images for slideshow display

Projecting a slideshow of images taken during an event using a photobooth is a great selling point. The photobooth software saves the individual photos and can also save the printed layout but these may not be suitable for projection e.g. a typical layout formatted for printing might look like:
 

Instead of using the images straight from the photobooth for display Hotfolder Prints could be setup to monitor the photobooth output folder and automatically format the images to fit the screen used for the slideshow e.g. laying out the four images to fit a 1920x1080 HD TV display:

Tip: The free PDF Creator printing utility (available from http://sourceforge.net/projects/pdfcreator) can be used to create a custom page size to match the size of the screen. In the example above the paper size was set to "PostScript Custom Page Size" with a resolution of 300dpi. The page width was set to 6.4 inches (6.4 inches x 300dpi = 1920 pixels) and the height to 3.6 inches (3.6 inches x 300dpi = 1080 pixels). Alternatively if the output option is set to "JPEG copy only" you can specify the page size in pixels using the custom size setting.

The output option in Hotfolder Prints should be set to "JPEG copy only" since we want to display the images but not print them. The slideshow in our BreezeBrowser Pro software can then be setup to monitor and display the screen images from the prints folder where Hotfolder Prints saves the JPEG copies.

Photobooth with green screen

 
Our photobooth products can be used for green screen shooting by setting the output option to none so that only the individual photos are saved to disk. A separate third party application such as the Pro batch version of Green Screen Wizard can then be setup to monitor the folder for new images, automatically replace the green screen background with a background image and save the images in a different folder. Hotfolder Prints can then monitor the output folder from the green screen application and when all the images have been processed it will automatically format and print them.