A guest photo highlight reel from your guests’ phones, the morning after

Why send a highlight reel the morning after?

The morning after is when everyone is thinking about the night before and nobody has the photos yet. The professional photographs, if there are any, are weeks away. The group chat is full of “did anyone get one of…?”. A short video in that chat, made from the photos the guests themselves took, lands at exactly the right moment: it is the evening, played back to the people who were in it.

It also does a quieter job. A reel is the best reminder there is that the album exists and is still open. People who meant to add their photos and forgot see their friends’ pictures, and add theirs. Anything they add joins the same gallery.

What is in a guest photo highlight reel?

On an upgraded event, the highlight reel compiles your event’s photos into an MP4 video with gentle panning: an ordinary video file that plays on any phone or computer and can be sent in a message, played on the telly or kept with the rest. See What is the highlight reel?

• Only public, published photos. Anything hidden, private, or still waiting in the approval queue is left out, so nothing reaches the reel that has not reached the gallery.
• Your pinned photos lead. Pin up to six photos on the Content tab and they open the selection, as they sit at the top of the guests’ gallery. See What does pinning a photo do?
• The room’s favourites shape the rest. Guests’ likes in the gallery feed the selection, so a reel usually mixes what you chose with what everyone else loved.

How do you make one?

Open the Keepsakes tab and start the highlight reel. It takes a minute or two, and the page tells you when it is ready. That is the whole of it; the work worth doing is in the ten minutes before you press the button.

• Tidy first. Auto-Hide Bad Photos on the Moderation tab hides every public photo measured as blurry or too dark, in one pass, without deleting anything. The morning after is the time to run it, before the reel. It hides by picture quality only, so check it has not taken a perfectly good candlelit shot. See What does “Auto-Hide Bad Photos” do?
• Hide what does not belong. A photo that is fine for the gallery may not be one for a video sent to Granny. Hiding it takes it out of the gallery, the slideshow and the reel, and keeps it for you. See How do I hide or delete a photo?
• Pin your six. The photos you want the reel to open on: the two of you, the whole family, the one everyone will ask about.
• Clear the queue. If you had Require approval on, approve what is waiting first; photos still in the queue are not public yet, so the reel cannot use them.

Can you make it again?

Yes, as often as you like. Photos can keep arriving for days, likes keep shifting, and you may change your mind about the six you pinned. Regenerate the reel after a tidy-up or a fresh batch and the new version replaces the old. A good pattern is a first reel the morning after, sent with the album link, and a second a week later, once the stragglers are in, for the family and anyone who missed the first.

How do you send it round?

Download the MP4 and send it wherever your guests already are: the family chat, an email to your guest list, a post if you are happy for it to be public. Put the album link in the same message, with one line: “Here is last night. Add any photos you took; the album is still open.”

Guests were never asked for an email address, so Mosaikin does not send the reel for you; it goes out from you, which is how a thank-you should arrive anyway. If the gallery is protected, include the access code with the link.

What else comes with an upgraded event?

The reel is one of the keepsakes on the Keepsakes tab. An upgraded event also downloads every photo as one ZIP at full display size, cleaned of camera metadata, and the guestbook as a typeset PDF. See What is in the photo archive?

Creating the event is free, with up to 30 photos. Upgrading is a single payment for that one event, Plus £25 for a party and Premium £89 for most weddings, with no subscription. See pricing, weddings on Mosaikin and parties on Mosaikin.