How to create a shared albumfor an event, with nothing to download
One link, a QR on the table, and every photo of the night ends up in one place, at full quality. Five minutes to set up, zero apps to install for the people uploading.
Before you start
"Shared album" means three different things depending on who says it. On an iPhone it is the iCloud feature: handy within a family, but Apple states that shared photos are reduced to 2048 pixels on the long edge and videos to 720p. In Google Photos it is an album that anyone with access can add to, and adding requires a Google account (Google Photos help). In a WhatsApp group the photos arrive compressed, unless you send them in HD or as a document, one at a time (WhatsApp help center).
This article is about the third thing: a place where anyone with the link can upload from the phone's browser, with no sign-up and nothing to install, and where the photos arrive at the resolution they were taken at. That is what a party, a wedding or a trip needs, where the people holding the photos are thirty and none of them wants one more step.
What you need: a free account for you, the one creating the album (an email or a Google account is enough), a name for the occasion, a date and a place. The people uploading need nothing.
Creating the album
On Dumpbox a shared album for an occasion is called an event: a page with a date and a place, where guests upload by scanning a QR code. Here is how.
- 1
Sign in to Dumpbox
Open the site and tap "Sign up now, it's free". You can sign in with Google or with your email: no card, no trial that runs out. If you already have an account, you just sign in.
- 2
Tap "Dump", then "New event"
The "Dump" button sits in the bottom bar. A menu opens with three choices: "New Dump" is an album of your own, "New collection" lines up several albums. What you want is "New event": a page for an occasion with a date and a place, where guests upload from the QR.
- 3
Give it a title, a date and a place
The title is what guests will read after scanning the QR: "Chiara and Marco's wedding" works, "Album 1" does not. The date is for you, to find it again. The place is always needed: whoever gets the invitation must know where to go.
- 4
Choose who can see it
Only two options. "Private": the event can be reached only with the link, and for a family party that is almost always the right choice. "Public": it shows up on Explore, where anyone can find it. There is no third option in between, on purpose: either you know exactly who sees the photos, or they are public.
- 5
Tap "Create event"
The event is ready. On its page you find the QR to scan, the link to copy with one tap and "Poster to print", an A4 sheet with the QR and the address written underneath, for whoever does not scan.
Sharing it: link or QR
The link goes in the WhatsApp group the day before, so people arrive already knowing where the photos go. The QR gets printed and placed where people stop: on the tables, next to the buffet, on the bathroom mirror. Never only at the entrance, where everyone's hands are full and their mind elsewhere.
Three gestures everyone already knows. There is no fourth step to explain to your aunt.
Print the QR at least four centimetres wide, with the address written in plain text underneath. The poster on the event page is vector: it shrinks to a place card without pixelating, and "Save as PDF" gives you a real PDF.
What the person uploading sees
The QR opens a page in the phone's browser, without asking to install or sign up. You pick the photos from the camera roll, tap upload, and the photos go up at their original resolution, not compressed like in a chat. You can type your name, so the host knows who sent what, but it is not required.
When the green tick appears the photo is already in the approval queue, no longer only on the phone. If a guest changes their mind, they can withdraw it themselves from the same phone they sent it from: they will see "Photo withdrawn".
After the event
- You approve what came in, one photo at a time or all at once. Until you approve, nobody else sees it: that is the moderation queue, and for a party with children or colleagues it is the part that matters.
- You send the link again in the group the day after. Half of the photos arrive then, not during the party: in the evening people dance, the next morning they look at their camera roll.
- If you turn on "Without an account too" in the event settings, guests download the approved photos from the same link, at full quality, and see them next to everyone else's. Nobody has to ask you to send them one by one.
We are not a backup: if you delete the event, the photos go with it, and if you delete the account, so do they. Keep your own copies where you already keep them.
We do not manage the consent of the people in the photos: that stays between you and your guests. What we do give you is the approval queue, a button to remove any photo, and a report link on every image.
Frequently asked questions
- Do guests have to sign up or download an app?
- No. The QR opens a page in the phone's browser and the upload happens there. No app, no account, no email to leave behind: it is the reason your aunt will use it while the apps that ask to install something get ignored.
- Do the photos stay at their original quality?
- Yes. Photos are kept at the resolution they were taken at. That is the difference from iCloud shared albums, which reduce them to 2048 pixels, and from chats, which compress them.
- Can I add photos later, from a computer?
- Yes. The link also works from a computer's browser, so whoever keeps their photos on a PC uploads from there. And you, who created the event, can add photos from your Box at any time.
- How much space do I get?
- The free plan has 5 GB. That is enough for a party; for a wedding with a hundred and fifty guests and videos it is not, and for that there is the beta with 100 GB and no expiry, which you apply for on the site.
Create your shared album
Five minutes today, every photo tomorrow. The free plan is enough to start.