Download your photos, videos, and albums

Nothing you download from Partyreel is a copy of a copy. Every file is the original that was uploaded, byte for byte, with the location metadata already stripped. The one lighter choice is a phone-size set for posting, and it is always named as that.

One photo or video

Open it in the photo viewer and tap Save. On a desktop, the same Save appears when you hover a tile. The file is named after the event with a short id, and it's the full-size original. Videos download as the uploaded file, not a re-encode.

Take a pick home: Select, then Save

1. The album
2. Select
3. Save

Tap Select above the photos, beside View, and every tile turns into a check. Tap the ones you want, or All for everything you can see; once you've added some of your own, Yours picks just those. The bar at the top counts your picks, Cancel leaves Select mode, and the round button at the foot turns into Save, wearing your count.

Press Save. On a phone, a quick choice rises with two ways home, each with its size beside it so you can see what the difference costs:

• Save to Photos puts your picks into your photo library at phone size: sharp in any post, and light. The round button fills as they arrive; when it reads Ready, press it once more and your phone's own sheet opens, where Save Images puts them in Photos. (On Android the same sheet hands them to your photo apps.)
• Save to Files keeps the originals, every pixel, as one zip. On Android the row reads Save to Downloads.

A computer, or a phone whose browser can't hand files to its own sheet, asks nothing: Save downloads the originals as one zip.

A note at the top of the screen keeps you posted while a zip gets ready, and its x stops it at any point (it asks first). If a file can't be found (it was deleted after you picked it), the note counts what made it into your download and offers to try again for the rest. If none of it can be found, nothing downloads at all: you get Nothing left to download. rather than an empty file.

As the host: Download

1. Dashboard
2. Your event
3. Download

Download, in the album's own header beside Select, opens Take it home: your album two ways, each pictured with its own photos, sized as the panel opens, and given one button.

• Originals, Full size, to keep for good. Every photo and video exactly as it was uploaded, as one zip. Its Download starts it.
• Phone size, Light enough to post tonight. The photos only, each at a size that is sharp in any post and a fraction of the weight; videos come as they were taken, with the originals. On a phone whose own sheet can take files its button reads Save and puts them in Photos; anywhere else it reads Download and gives a zip.

Include hidden items appears only when something is hidden or waiting, and changes what both sets take and weigh. There's no separate confirm: press a set's button and it starts, and a zip streams straight to your device.

To take a chosen set instead, use Select mode: pick tiles, then Download in the bar (that bundle skips the panel and includes hidden items). See select many photos at once.

A very big album

A set too big for one file still downloads, in parts, each part its own zip. The note walks you through them: it says which part is downloading and how many there are, a tap gets the next one, and after the last it tells you that's everything. Keep every part, because together they're the whole set. Photos takes a set only up to a limit: past it, a guest's Save to Photos row says so and the originals take the whole set, and a host's Phone size downloads as a zip.

On a phone

A zip saves to the Files app on an iPhone or iPad, or to Downloads on Android, never straight into your photo library (tap the zip in Files to open it). To put photos in Photos, use Save to Photos for a pick, or open a single photo in the photo viewer and tap Save to keep its original.

What guests can download

Exactly what they can see. A guest with full access can save any single photo, or Select everything with All and take it home; hidden and unapproved items are never in what they save. A guest who added photos also gets Yours in Select mode: just the photos and videos they uploaded themselves, whether from their library or taken right there in the album. A visitor who only sees the preview can download only that preview. There's no host switch to disable downloads: if someone can open the album, they can keep it, which is what the album is for. The guest side is in browse the album.

HEIC files on Windows

iPhones shoot HEIC, and Partyreel keeps the file as it came, so downloaded originals can include .heic photos. They open natively on a Mac, an iPhone, or an iPad. On Windows, install the HEIF Image Extensions from the Microsoft Store, or convert the files with any photo app that exports JPEG. Phone size copies are JPEG, which open anywhere. Thumbnails show everywhere; the full-size view of a HEIC opens only in Safari, so on Windows or Android save the file and open it in a photo app.

Printing your photos

Take the originals, not Phone size, to any print service or photo app; the files are full resolution. Partyreel doesn't offer prints.