The event is over, the gallery is full, and you want every photo on your laptop in one download — no right-click, save, rename, repeat. Here is how to download all event photos as a ZIP, what to check on your machine before you start, and how to archive the result so you still have it in ten years.

Why ZIP, not photo-by-photo

  • Speed. One request, one big file, one local decompression — minutes instead of hours.
  • Completeness. Nothing forgotten, nothing accidentally renamed or duplicated.
  • Metadata preserved. EXIF dates, GPS tags, original filenames — everything survives the transfer.
  • Clean archive. A single wedding-2026.zip sitting in your backups is easier to spot in a decade than 1,500 loose JPEGs.

Downloading from Photobooth

Per-guest ZIP

In the admin dashboard, open a guest's profile and click "Download all as ZIP". The server assembles the file on the fly and hands you back a <nickname>-photos.zip.

Whole-event ZIP

The same action from the main admin view produces a ZIP with one sub-folder per guest nickname, each containing that guest's photos. The structure is sortable out of the box.

Hand-picked selection

From your own guest gallery you can tick a subset — five photos, twenty photos — and ZIP only those. Useful when you want to send a parent a small slice without exposing the whole album.

Preparing your computer

Free disk space

Count on 3 to 8 MB per photo from a modern smartphone. A wedding with 1,500 photos ends up as a 5 to 12 GB ZIP (JPEG compresses poorly, so ZIP barely shrinks the total).

Connection quality

On a fibre connection, 10 GB downloads in about fifteen minutes. On a slower DSL line (8 Mbps) plan for closer to three hours. Avoid mobile data and public Wi-Fi for anything over a couple of GB — the download will stall and you will pay for it twice.

Browser

Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge all handle multi-GB downloads without drama. Turn off aggressive pop-up blockers for the moment of the click so the transfer starts without interruption.

After the download

1. Verify the file

Open the ZIP (without extracting) and check that the file count matches the total shown in the admin dashboard. An interrupted download sometimes leaves a partial file that opens but is missing photos.

2. Extract to a dedicated folder

Something like ~/Photos/Wedding-2026/. Keep the original ZIP next to it as a second copy — belt and braces.

3. De-dupe against the professional photographer

If a guest shot the same moment as the pro, you will have near duplicates. Tools like Gemini Photos, dupeGuru on Windows, or simply sorting by capture time and eyeballing thumbnails will clear them out.

4. Archive in three places

Local drive + personal cloud + external drive is the classic 3-2-1 rule. Better still, enable the automatic Google Drive backup before the event so a second copy lands the moment each photo is uploaded.

When the ZIP is too big

For very large galleries (5,000+ photos, 30+ GB) it is safer to download per guest than in one file. It lets you resume if one download fails, and makes the tree easier to navigate. The Photobooth admin offers both modes.

File formats you will find inside

  • JPEG: the most common format, kept exactly as uploaded.
  • HEIC: the default on recent iPhones. Windows Photos now reads it natively with a free plug-in; for older setups, batch-convert to JPEG with the Apple Photos export option or ImageMagick.
  • PNG:screenshots and memes that guests couldn't resist sending. Kept as-is.
  • MP4: short clips. Accepted up to a size cap depending on your Photobooth plan.

Ready to run a gallery of your own? Head to the pricing page, or read the companion guide on gathering every wedding photo in one place.