Hi everyone!
This article will show you how to sync your event photos to a Dropbox folder. That way you can share a live link to that folder and your clients can see the images being uploaded live and have access to view and download them as long as the folder exists in your Dropbox account.
There are several methods in order to sync a folder on your computer to your Dropbox account and in this article, we will show 2 of them.
For this article, we used the desktop app for Dropbox but the same applies and is doable through their web application as well.
The 2 methods are:
DropIt
With the DropIt application, you can monitor a certain folder (for example the Photos folder of your event) and upload them automatically to a designated folder in your Dropbox account.
Let's first start with what we need to do on the Dropbox side of things:
* Create an account with Dropbox and download the desktop application here.
* Open the application and create a new folder in it (right-click and select "New" -> "Folder") and name it. For this example, I named it "Graduation".
This "Graduation" folder will be the folder to which all the photos from my event will be copied to.
In order to share the link for this folder with your clients (in advance or after the event) simply right-click on the folder and select "Share"
Once you select "Share" you can decide on how you would like to share it - by typing an email address and sharing it via an email or by clicking on "Copy link" and then you have a shareable link.
Now we need to set up DropIt so it will sync the photos to our folder.
1. Download the DropIt application here and install it.
2. Open DropIt > Right-click on the DropIt icon, select Options, and go to the Monitoring tab.
3. Check the box to "Enable scan of monitored folders" and select "Immediate on-change"
4. Click at the bottom on the "Add" button, press on the folder icon and select your desired folder (This PC -> C: drive -> MirrorMeBooth -> Events -> {your selected event name} -> photos).
5. Open DropIt > Right-click on the DropIt icon, and select Associations.
6. Click on the + icon.
Name: You can give the association a name
Rules: enter *
Action: Select "Copy"
Destination folder: Select the folder that you created in your Dropbox account
Click "Save" and then press on the Check icon.
That's it - now all the photos from your event folder will be copied to the Dropbox folder you created in advance!
Symlink
With the Foto Master Photo Booth software, all the photos are saved in the Events folder in the C drive and that is why we need to keep the folder in that location and can't move it directly to the Dropbox app.
A symbolic link, also known as symlink, can be used in cases just like that when you want to sync a folder without moving it from its original location - it will trick your computer into thinking the folder is in both places at once
How do we do that?
1. Move the Folder Into Dropbox
First, you’ll need to put the folder you’re syncing in your Dropbox folder (but don't worry we are creating the link so it will still look like it remained in its place)
In the example below I am moving my Photos folder from MyFirstEvent to my Dropbox folder
2. Type “command prompt” into the Windows search bar and choose to “run as administrator.”
3. Type “mklink /D <path to symlink> <path to original folder>” and press enter.
So in in my case, I will type:
mklink /D "C:\MirrorMeBooth\Events\MyFirstEvent\photos" "C:\Users\Photo mosaic\Dropbox\photos"
*meaning the first path is where I want the link to be created and the second path is the location of the folder I wish to create the link for.
That's it. Now I can see the folder in my Dropbox account as well as in my event folder, Any photo that will be added to my event will be automatically synced with my Dropbox.
Now, if we want to share the Dropbox folder with out clients all we need to do is:
* Open the desktop application and right-click on the folder you wish to share and select "Share"
* Once you select "Share" you can decide on how you would like to share it - by typing an email address and sharing it via an email or by clicking on "Copy link" and then you have a shareable link.