Live Portrait Printing for a Christmas Event

[Andrew P.]

Hi All-

First time posting in the forums so I hope I'm in the right place.

I've been tasked with coming up with an idea for a charity event that we're running, Breakfast w/ Santa.

This year, my girlfriend (the photographer) and I want to take and print pictures on site with Santa that the families can then buy. She has a Canon Rebel T2i and i'll bring a laptop and an external screen that the families can review.

What I really want to do is be able to dump one (or two) shots into a program that we can then quickly touch up add a custom holiday frame and our organizations logo / info to be printed. I can probably get this done with publisher (that I already have) but I'm worried that it'll be too time consuming with the amount of families that we'll be taking photos for.

Can someone get me started? i'm looking for something free/cheap as this is a charity organization.

Best

 

[vintagesnaps]

I've seen printing onsite done at youth sports tournaments etc. but just prints, not customized/framed. Maybe an option would be to get/make the kind of greeting cards that you can just insert the print to be able to provide to participants at the event.



(edit - Now that I think of it, I don't know offhand where I got those type cards or that I've seen them recently; I just don't know that you could edit/customize if you need to print and hand them to participants on the spot.)

 

[tirediron]

The easiest way I can think of would be to use any editing application which can use layers (PS, PS Elements, PaintShop Pro, Gimp) and simply save a document with all of that information, and each time you bring an image in, open up that document as a new layer, flatten, save as, done.

That said, while this is NOT something I do myself since I don't feel it gives sufficient time to actually process an image to the standard I would want to be associated with me, on the couple of occasions I have seen it done (once by pros, once by someone who clearly had little experience), it was a challenge. The pro had a team (IIRC 6-7) using two computers & two die-sub printers (probably $5K+ just in that alone) and even with that, there were line-ups. The other, was I expect similar to yourself, and was clearly foundering.

You need to have your workflow clearly defined, and you need to be shooting nearly 100% perfect in-camera so that there is virtually no processing. This means shooting from a tripod, exposure bang-on, framing bang-on... I'm not trying to discourage you, rather just advise that this may be more of a challenge than you anticipated.

 

[SquarePeg37 8]

I've seen printing onsite done at youth sports tournaments etc. but just prints, not customized/framed. Maybe an option would be to get/make the kind of greeting cards that you can just insert the print to be able to provide to participants at the event.



(edit - Now that I think of it, I don't know offhand where I got those type cards or that I've seen them recently; I just don't know that you could edit/customize if you need to print and hand them to participants on the spot.)

I've used those photo insert cards. You're right, they're not as available as they used to be but you can usually find a couple of different options at Target or CVS. I have only seen the ones for 4X6 photos, nothing for larger. OP - You could use the inside of the card to add your organization information in advance.

That being said, I agree with Tirediron's caution. I organized a "photo booth" at an event for my daughter's 5th grade end of the year pool party and it was crazy frantic trying to get it all done by the end of the 3 hour event. Let me stress that I am not nor do I aspire to be a pro photog and that these were just for fun photos printed on a portable Canon Selphy, nothing that I would ever dream of charging for. There were 70+ kids and we provided one photo per child as a momento. We did no editing other than cropping when needed. There were 3 of us with 1 organizing/wrangling the kids and the other 2 switching off taking the photos and printing. In our case we did not have to take 1 photo per kid, many arranged themselves in groups of 3+ so some of the photos could be printed say X5 and used for 5 differnent kids... What we ended up doing was having them collect their photo on the way out the door when their parents checked them out and even with that extra time it was a rush to get everything printed and organized. We were literally printing the last photos as the dj was playing the last song. If you are going to add selling the photos to the tasks to be done, you'll need more than just 2 people.

 

[Andrew P.]

Thank you all for the replies.

I think I'll go home tonight and draft up a firm workflow run through some time trials and see if this is feasible.. Worst case, we just print the photos with the xmas background and call it a day. Being that it's a charity event, people are a little less critical if the photos of their screaming offspring don't come out quite as "picture perfect"

It's a smaller venue so it should be pretty steady through the whole event. But certainly, if it takes more then 10-15 minutes from shot to print, that might be a deal breaker.

 

[fotomonkey]

The easiest way I can think of would be to use any editing application which can use layers (PS, PS Elements, PaintShop Pro, Gimp) and simply save a document with all of that information, and each time you bring an image in, open up that document as a new layer, flatten, save as, done.

Depending on how you approach it there's an even easier way. Perhaps there's a camera/print shop in the area that would be willing to donate (or for a small fee) provide a dye sub printer. There are models that allow you to load a template that gets printed on every image. So you'd create the file and load it once into the printer. Then every image you print will have the frame and info you created. No per-image fiddling other than cropping, etc.

If you're stuck using an inkjet or other printer then to speed up what tirediron said I'd create an action to automate as much of the work as possible in PS. You could have the marquee tool preset to whatever size you're printing to make a quick crop and then let the action add the other info and print.

 

[vintagesnaps]

I don't know that I'd plan on even 10 minutes per photo - 10 x 30 kids' photos would be 5 hours wouldn't it? (6 per hour) So this would mean you likely would have maybe 2-3 minutes per photo? unless it's a very small number of participants or a really long event (or as mentioned, if there might be some small groups instead of individuals).

This seems like you'll have to print what you get in camera and just hand them the print or a preprinted card w/the photo to be inserted.