The Photo Booth Solutions Blog

3D Animated GIFs, also known as Split Depth GIFs have been becoming more and more popular. Buzzfeed has some great examples, my favorite being this Captain America one.

Pretty cool, right?  It's a simple optical illusion triggered by the white lines switching from the foreground to the background of the moving object as it gets closer to the camera. Those samples are all done with Photoshop, but here's you can create the same effect using photo booth software like Social Booth.

Set up the Green Screen Backgrounds and Overlays

As mentioned above, the effect is created by having the white lines appear in front of and behind the object in motion to create the illusion that it is coming out at you.  We will accomplish this by placing the white lines in our green screen backgrounds and green screen overlays at the appropriate times. This technique will only work while using green screen removal as it's the only way to get the white lines in the background and foreground at various points of the GIF. 

First, select an 1800x1200 jpg file for your greensceen background and make 4 copies of it.
Save them as 01.jpg, 02.jpg, 03.jpg and 04.jpg.
These will be the frames where the white lines are on top of or in front of the subject in the photo.

Then place 2 white lines on top of the green screen background and save 4 copies of that.
Save them as 05.jpg, 06.jpg, 07.jpg and 08.jpg. 
These will be the frames where the white lines are behind the subject.

Then hide your background layer and save out 4 copies of the white lines by themselves as transparent png files. 
Save them as 01-overlay.png, 02-overlay.png, 03-overlay.png and 04-overlay.png.
These will be the white lines in front of the subject during the 1st 4 frames.
Be sure to name your overlay files the same as your corresponding background file with the addition of “-overlay”  Also make sure the overlays are saved as png.
 

Lastly, make 4 copies of a blank transparent png.  
Save them as 05-overlay.png, 06-overlay.png, 07-overlay.png and 08-overlay.png.
These will go on top of the gif when the white lines are in the background files.
So when you are done, your green screen folder should have 16 files and should look something like this

Configure Social Booth

Enable Green Screen in the Social Booth settings. You will also need to enable Green Screen Overlays and Auto Cycle Backgrounds in the settings.  
Green Screen Overlays will be png files named with “-overlay” that get overlayed on top of the finished green screen photo, in our case, the white lines.
Auto Cycle Backgrounds will tell Social Booth to automatically use the next background and overlay file in the greenscreen folder so the user doesn't have to select each one. 

You will then need to create a template that has enough shots.  I selected a 4 shot template and modified if to have 8 shots.  Keep in mind, you can use this technique with less than 8 photos.  I just chose 8 to have the most animation frames, but you can also do this with a 3 or 4 shot template.

Have fun

That's pretty much it.  You can experiment with different timings for the overlays and lines.  One technique is to leave 1 line always on top in all of the overlay files and just remove the other so the motion only appears on 1 side of the animation.  
I've included a zip file of the backgrounds and overlay files in this example here.

Slow motion photo booths are all the rage and Social Booth now has slomo video capability!  You can now shoot 60 fps with a Canon t3i, t4i, t5i, or SL1.

It's no secret that the photo booth market is getting increasingly saturated every day.  As more and more vendors enter the market, photo booth operators need to set themselves apart from the competition by adding new and exciting offerings.  Here's a list of some of the unique features in Social Booth that will be sure to get your photo booth more attention.  

10. Social Media Uploads at the Booth

This one's pretty obvious. It's called “Social Booth” for a reason, right.  If you want to upload to social media from your photo booth, you've come to the right place.  Email, Facebook, Twitter, SMS & Pinterest are all built in and users can upload and share right from the booth. There's also FTP and Smugmug background uploaders for you, the operator to user to send photos to your website or gallery in real time.  No Internet at your event? No problem.  Uploads can be queued offline and sent when your are back online.  Worried about the lines backing up at your booth?  Social Booth integrates seamlessly with Photo Booth Connected to allow you to setup social media kiosks on touchscreen PCs, Windows tablets, iPads or Android tablets.

9. Animated GIF Photo Booth

Animated GIFs are a blast and people love them.  With Social Booth, users will be able to share their GIFs while still printing the still photos.  You can even add animated overlays to the GIFs to create more layered effects.

8. Advanced Photo Booth Filters

7. Host Photos on Your Website with Photo Booth Cloud

6. Run a Photo Booth Contest

5. Suggest poses using Match Game Mode

4. Animated Animated GIFS

More fun with Animated GIFs! You can combine Green Screen with Animated GIFs and Animated Backgrounds to create eye-popping effects.

3. Display a Remote Photo Booth Slideshow over Chromecast

Running a slideshow on an external monitor is easy.  But how about running one on a giant screen across the room?  Social Booth's Chromecast Slideshow feature and a Google Chromecast device will allow you to wirelessly transmit a slideshow to a remote TV.

2. Collect Data with Photo Booth Surveys

Data Collection may not be the most glamorous feature on this list, but corporate clients love Surveys for Photo Booth activations.  

1. Video Hosts

Make your photo booth more fun with Social Booth's Match Game.  Display a random photo or pose for the user to mimic.  Use the built in Internet Memes photos and allow users to add their own text to create their own Meme to share on Social Media, or set up a celebrity look alike contest or Charades Booth.

Social Booth now lets you combine Animated Backgrounds with Green Screen to create some truely awesome Animated GIFs.  Simply grab frames from any stock video to use as your background and watch your Green Screen photos come to life!