After any event worth remembering, the photos are scattered. A few are on the hired photographer's card, if there was one. Most are on the guests' phones: twenty people at a birthday, sixty on a team offsite, two hundred at a reunion, each holding a slice of the day. Asking for them in the group chat gets you a handful from the same three people. A QR code or a link that opens an upload page gets you far more, because adding photos becomes a tap at the moment people are already holding their phones. This guide covers how to set that up for any kind of event, and the part most upload tools leave out: giving everyone back the photos they are in.
The usual ways, and where each one stops
- •A group chat. Everyone is already in it, which is its strength. But the photos arrive mixed in with the conversation, are often sent compressed, and saving them means scrolling back through days of messages.
- •A shared cloud folder or album. One place and the original files, which is better. But every guest sees every photo, so the only way to find yourself is to look through all of them.
- •An event gallery with an upload link. Guests add their photos to the same gallery the event's photos live in, you decide what goes live, and each guest finds the photos they appear in with a selfie.
The half that collecting leaves out
Collecting photos is only useful if people get them back. At a party of sixty, one guest might appear in forty photos spread across twenty phones. In a shared folder, they look through every photo to find theirs, or more likely they don't. FotoMe AI indexes every photo in the gallery by face, guest uploads included, so a guest takes one selfie and sees the photos they appear in from every phone that contributed, plus the photographer's if there was one. Nobody tags anyone.
That works with or without a hired photographer. For a family trip or a house party, whoever organises it creates the event and shares the link, and everyone adds their photos. Each person then scans their face once and gets the photos they are in from all the phones, which a group chat or a shared album does not do.
What a guest does
- 01Scans the QR code or taps the link. The gallery opens in the phone's browser, with no app to install and no account to create. If the gallery is private, they enter its PIN first.
- 02Taps "Add your photos", just under "Find my photos" on the gallery's first page.
- 03Confirms their email address with a one-time code. A guest who has already confirmed on that phone goes straight in.
- 04Picks photos from their camera roll, up to 20 at a time, in JPG or PNG. Their uploads page lists everything they have sent so far, on any phone where they confirm the same address.
Uploading does not need a selfie. A guest who only wants to share their photos never has to scan their face, and one who wants their own photos taps "Find my photos" on the same page.
Why guests confirm an email first
An open upload link is only as good as the worst thing someone sends to it. Asking for a confirmed address before the first upload means every guest photo comes from a reachable person. It is also what the per-person limit counts against, so a guest cannot get around the limit by clearing their browser. The event's owner and editors see which address sent each photo, so they can review one guest's photos together. Other guests never see who uploaded what.
Confirming an email to upload does not sign a guest up for anything. New-photo emails are a separate button a guest has to press.
Review first, or show right away
Each event has one setting for what happens when a guest presses send:
- •Review first, the default. Photos wait in a queue that only you and your team see, and nothing reaches the gallery until you approve it. A rejected photo is deleted from storage, not just hidden. Use it for weddings, school and corporate events, and anything with a client's name on the gallery.
- •Show right away. Photos join the gallery as soon as they finish uploading. Use it for a family trip or a party among friends, where waiting for approval would only slow things down. You can still delete any photo afterwards.
Two more settings sit beside it. Photos per person caps how many photos each guest can add: any number from 1 to 1,000, with 100 as the default, counting waiting and live photos together. And you can let guests remove their own photos while those photos are still waiting for review. Once a photo is in the gallery, only you or your team can remove it, because other guests may already have it in their matches.
Getting the code and the link in front of people
- 01Create the event before it starts, so the link and QR code exist before anything is printed. The link does not change when photos are added later.
- 02Turn on guest uploads in the event's settings. It is off by default and set per event, so it is only on where you want it.
- 03Choose Review first or Show right away, and a photos-per-person limit.
- 04Download the poster. There is an A4 version for the venue and a square one for group chats and stories, each with the QR code, the gallery address, and the PIN if the gallery is private.
- 05Tell people the upload exists. One line on the sign, the table card or the group chat, such as "Took photos? Scan and tap Add your photos", works better than a button nobody mentioned.
- 06Send the link again after the event. Plenty of guests only look through their photos once they are home.
The QR code is the link in a form a camera can read, so use the code where people are standing in front of something and the link where they are reading a message. Links from the poster are tagged, so the event's analytics show whether visits came from the QR code or from a chat message.
After the event: going through what arrived
Guest photos have their own tab on the event, with two views: photos waiting for review and photos already in the gallery. You can filter by who sent them, to approve or delete one guest's photos together, or select many at once. An identical copy of a photo already in the event is skipped, so the queue does not fill up when two guests forward the same picture.
Approved photos are indexed by face like every other photo in the gallery. Guests who already took a selfie find the new ones when they come back to the link, and guests who asked to be emailed about new photos of themselves are told when they arrive.
What guest photos count against
Approved guest photos count against the event's plan exactly like photos you upload. Photos still waiting for review do not, so a guest pressing send cannot use up your plan. With Show right away a photo counts as soon as it is uploaded, and once the plan is full, new guest photos are turned away. Plans and prices are on the pricing page.
What it does not do
- •Video. Guest uploads are photos only, JPG and PNG.
- •Let guests browse everyone's photos. A guest sees the photos they appear in, not every other guest's camera roll.
- •Upload without an email. Every guest confirms an address before their first upload, and there is no setting to turn that off.
- •Keep photos forever. The gallery closes at the end of the event's plan period, and its photos and face data are deleted with it.