How to get your photo booth filter right

What a filter is

The filter — also called the custom frame — is the graphic overlay that sits on every photo the booth produces. It carries your colours, your logo, the couple's names, the date, the theme of the night.

Its role goes beyond decoration. It's what gives the photo context six months later, and what carries your brand when a participant shares their shot. At a trade show or an activation, it's the only part of the image that genuinely belongs to you.

Who builds it

Two routes, depending on your appetite for design work.

Our designers handle it. This is included in every rental. You send your elements — logo, palette, theme, wording — and we deliver the filter within 24h. You approve it before the event. That's the route the vast majority of our clients choose, including companies that have their own design team.

You build it yourself. If you already have brand guidelines and know the tools, our create your filter tutorial walks through Photoshop, Figma and Canva step by step, from transparent document to export.

Five rules for a filter that works

1. The right format

960 × 1280 pixels, portrait 3:4. These dimensions match the booth's framing: changing them distorts the result or crops your artwork.

2. A genuinely transparent background

The file must be a PNG with a transparent background. This is the most common mistake, and the most fatal: a white background covers the photo entirely. In your software you should see the grey chequerboard behind your elements, not white.

3. Keep the centre clear

Decorate the edges and corners. The centre holds the faces: anything you place there will cover someone. And your guests don't stand where you imagine — in a group of six, they fill the whole width of the frame.

4. A legible logo

A logo shrunk to 40 pixels wide in a corner will be read by nobody. If it has to be there, give it room, and check legibility on a phone screen — that's where the photo will be seen nine times out of ten.

5. Enough contrast

A white filter on a daylight wedding photo disappears. So does a black filter on a dark party. Test your artwork on two very different photos, one bright and one dark, before sending it.

Once the file is ready

Send it to us: our team checks transparency, dimensions and the result on a test photo, then installs it on your booth within 24h. If something is off, we tell you rather than installing it as is — a filter that covers faces ruins every photo of the night, and that cannot be fixed afterwards.

The full walkthrough, with screenshots per program, is on the create your filter page. To book your booth, everything is on our pricing page.