Several of you want to include guests names on DSLR Remote Pro prints. This post shows you how.

You can either start from an existing design, or run the setup wizard to create something completely new. You then need to

1. Create a keyboard where guests are prompted to type in their names
2. Choose whether to enter names before or after taking the photos
3. Add a caption to your print layout showing the name

Updates 21 August 2019

• Reprint note: Fast reprint runs off a copy of the original print layout (with the data guests have already entered )
• Post updated to correct error adding guest details after taking photos.

Create the keyboard where guests enter their names

Go to Advanced Settings and select the Touchscreen Settings screen

On this screen, click the Test Keyboard button, then choose Message keyboard from the dropdown menu

Hold down the Shift and Ctrl keys and left click your mouse.

This will save five files to your photo booth images folder: message_keyboard.xml, message_keyboard_lowercase.tif, message_keyboard_lowercase_pressed.tif, message_keyboard_uppercase.tif, message_keyboard_uppercase_pressed.tif

Go to your PhotoboothImages folder and

• delete these 4 tif files
• rename message_keyboard.xml as keyboard.xml 

My PhotoboothImages folder then looks like this:

Now open keyboard.xml in a text editor such as Microsoft Notepad (which comes free with Windows 10) and change the wording of the prompt from Please enter your message to Please enter your name (or whatever text you prefer).

Save your changes and close the text editor.

The edited version of keyboard.xml will build a touchscreen keyboard looking like this:

Advanced users: may wish to make other changes to the xml to customize this screen. See Collecting both guest names and a message below for an example.

Choose whether guests enter their names before or after taking the photos

You can control whether guests type in their names before or after taking the photos. Just select Email input at start of sequence  or Email input after taking photos on the Touchscreen settings screen as below

Extra screen when collecting guest data after taking photos

If you choose to collect the information after the photos are taken, you need to add an extra screen to your PhotoboothImages folder called keyboard_input_ok.jpg. This will be displayed for a short time after guests enter their data and hit OK.

You can create this screen by taking a copy of a blank screen such as taking.jpg and renaming the copy.

So far we have created a screen for guests to enter their names. Now we need to adapt your print layout to add these names.

Add a caption to your print layout which displays these names on the print

Open the Print Layout Editor and right click anywhere on the print. Select Add caption

To display the guests names, your caption must include the token {user1_data}. Adjust the font, color, position and angle of the caption as usual:

When you run the booth the name(s) guests enter will replace {user1_data}

 

You can combine these dynamic captions with the signing and drawing screen, including the ability for guests to choose the picture frame

Learn more

I have shown you how to add each guest’s name to prints. Taking this a bit further

Collecting both guest names and a message

To collect more information such as a message make these changes to keyboard.xml:

1. Make room to collect a second data item
2. Add a second prompt and data field, 
3. Change the background color of the screen.
4. To display the extra information on the print add a caption including {user2_data} to the print layout

Useful links

• More on creating custom keyboards
• Introduction to the print layout editor
• Using Breeze tokens to automatically add the event name, date or other other guest generated text, add unique indentifiers and much more

Try for yourself

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Thank you for taking the time to read this. Do share the post with others who may find it useful.

© Breeze Systems 2019