Every look plays the same photographs; it decides how they feel. The highlight reel and a clip share most of them, and switching is free to try in both.
The eight moods
The moods keep the photos front and center and change the grade and the motion. They're the reel's looks, and a clip's too.
In the reel, the host's Look is where everyone starts, and anyone can pick another under Style in the reel's controls; that choice stays on their own device. On a big screen or a laptop, every mood fills the frame edge to edge.
Six treatments, for clips
A clip can also wear a designed frame: Polaroid stack, Film strip, Scattered prints, Framed gallery, Card deck, and Layered parallax. The clip maker's Looks show each one drawn on your own clip before you choose. See make your own clip.
Pace and length
The reel has no length: it loops as long as the album lasts. Its pace is how long each photo holds (Each photo holds, in the reel's controls), which the host sets for everyone (3 seconds unless they choose) and anyone can change on their own screen.
A clip has a length. In the clip maker's tray, Length offers Auto, which fits the clip to the moments you picked, or 15, 30, or 60 seconds, up to 60 seconds on every plan. Longer isn't always better; a clip people watch to the end is the one they send on.
Layout
Layout makes a clip Portrait (9:16, for phones, Instagram Stories and Reels, and TikTok) or Landscape (16:9, for a TV or a website). Every look adapts to both, and your moments are reframed to fit: a landscape photo in a portrait clip is framed on its center rather than squeezed. The reel itself follows the screen it's on.
No music
Neither has sound. Partyreel won't guess at a song for someone else's wedding, and a silent clip is easy to score: lay any track under it in the app you post from.
Try three, keep one
Switching looks costs nothing, and nothing is made until you make it. Flick through a few with the clip playing; the right one is usually obvious in ten seconds.