How to Set Up a Photobooth for an Event, and Only Pay on Event Days (2026)

Setting up a photobooth for an event in Pixture takes about 15 minutes on the dashboard: create the event, pick its modes and templates, pair each booth computer with a 6-digit code, and press Start Booth at the venue. You pay only for the days you work. An Event Pass is $5 for 24 hours of Pix Pro on one computer, and it starts when you press Start Booth, not when you buy it. Two weddings this month cost $10. A quiet month costs nothing. We build Pixture and run our own booths, so this is the setup we use ourselves.

The short version

Prices in USD, October 2026. Pix Pro yearly is $300, billed once a year.

That means Event Passes win until about eight event days a month. Past that, Pix Pro monthly is cheaper. Over a full year, $300 of Pix Pro buys the same as 60 Event Passes, so an operator working five or more days a month on average should look at yearly instead.

Why pay per event day

Most event operators do not work every day. A wedding operator might do two Saturdays in March and seven in June. A monthly subscription charges the same in both months.

Software you pay for in a quiet month is rent on a booth sitting in your garage.

Other tools handle this differently, and some handle it well:

If you shoot every weekend all year, LumaBooth's yearly plan ($17 a month) costs less than Pix Pro and covers two devices. Touchpix counts active events instead of devices, which suits a few long-running events. If you never need cloud sharing or remote monitoring, Sparkbooth's one-time license is hard to beat. Event Passes make sense when your calendar is uneven, or when you add a second or third booth for one big event and do not want a subscription for it afterwards. All prices were checked on each vendor's own pricing page in October 2026; our photobooth software comparison has the full breakdown.

Before the event: what you need

• A Pixture account and the Pixture Photobooth app on every computer you bring. Download it here, Mac or Windows.
• One Event Pass per computer per 24 hours. Two booths at one wedding means two Event Passes. A two-day expo with one booth means two Event Passes, one after the other.
• Templates, your own from Pix Design or one of Pixture's free template packs.
• A payment gateway, only if guests pay at the booth. A wedding the couple paid for needs none.

You can buy Event Passes ahead of time on the Computers page (Buy license, then Event Pass), or later from the event page when you pair. An unused Event Pass waits in your account until a booth starts it.

Step 1: Create the event

Open Events and click + Create Event. The wizard walks you through four steps:

1. Details. Event name, client, date, start and end time, venue. Then the Modes guests can pick from on the booth: Photo, Video, 360/Slow-mo, Studio, Notes, or Roaming for a photographer walking the room. Each mode except Roaming becomes a button on the booth's start screen.
2. Templates. Tick the print templates guests can choose. While the event runs, the booth offers only these, not your everyday set.
3. Screens. The screens guests see on the booth, from welcome to sharing.
4. Payment. Turn on Pay Per Session and set a price if guests pay. Leave it off for a hosted wedding or a sponsored brand booth, and every session is free.

Click Create event. The event page opens with the Pair a computer popup ready.

Step 2: Make the booth look like the client's event

On the event's Setup tab, Edit appearance opens the start screen: the couple's names or the brand's title, the date, a logo, a background photo. Wedding fonts like Great Vibes and Cormorant Garamond are built in. Try it full screen shows the booth exactly as guests will see it, right in your browser, so you can send the client a screenshot for sign-off before you load the car.

The tabs below set the rest: the countdown, the GIF frame, video length, and the Output guests get (prints, GIF, live photo, the raw singles). Everything saves as you go. A red "!" on a tab means something is still missing, usually a template.

This is also where the Template Editor in Pix Design earns its keep: upload the client's frame design and the photo slots fill themselves, with no dragging each shot into place.

Step 3: Pair each booth computer

Click + Pair a computer on the Setup tab. You get a 6-digit code.

On the booth computer, open Pixture Photobooth and type the code on the login screen's Pairing Code tab. A computer that is already set up uses Pair with a code in its operator menu instead, so it does not have to log out. Repeat for every computer at the event.

Pairing spends nothing. You can pair the night before, at home, with the whole kit on the kitchen table. The computer goes into Event mode and keeps a list of your events, so the same laptop runs Saturday's wedding and Sunday's birthday without pairing again.

Step 4: On the day, press Start Booth

At the venue, pick the event on the booth's event list, launch it, and press Start Booth in the operator menu. If you have an unused Event Pass, the booth shows Use 1 Event Pass with the exact time it will run until. Tap Start Booth and the 24 hours begin then.

A few things happen on their own:

• A long night does not cut out. If the 24 hours run out mid-event, the next guest who taps start keeps the booth going: it starts your next unused Event Pass with no question asked, and tells you when the booth is idle.
• A multi-day event extends from your phone. Extend 24h on the computer's row on the event page adds another 24 hours from an unused Event Pass.
• No surprise watermark. A computer on an event never runs watermarked. Without an Event Pass or Pix Pro it simply will not start sessions, and the screen shows a QR code to buy one on your phone.
• Swapping laptops keeps the time. If a computer dies and you log it out, its running Event Pass keeps its end time, and the next event computer you start continues it instead of spending a new one.

The Report tab is Booth Health for the event: each computer's camera, printer, paper left and temperature while you work, so a printer running low at 9pm shows up on your phone before the guests notice.

Step 5: Share the album and wrap up

Every event has a public album at pixture.io/album/..., switched on from the moment you create the event. Copy the link to the client, and the booth shows its QR code on the share screen so guests find their photos straight away. Slideshow puts the album on a venue screen, and Embed drops it on the client's website.

When you are done, click Archive event. That is the only "done" button. The event's dates never shut a booth down by themselves, so a wedding that runs past midnight keeps going.

Photos stay in the album for 60 days. Download all gives you every photo as one zip, so save the client's copy before then.

Starting from zero? Our guide to starting a photobooth business covers the kit and the first bookings, and our wedding photobooth cost guide helps you price the package you sell.