Photo Booth on your iPad or Mac: take selfies with the best effects!

Everything about Photo Booth

The Photo Booth app is installed by default on your Mac or iPad and contains lots of fun filters to brighten up your selfies. What can you do with it? How exactly does that app work? And what is the difference between the app on your iPad and the app on the Mac? We explain all that in this article.

• Photo Booth on the iPad
• Photo Booth on Mac
  • Take a photo or video
  • iPhone as camera for Photo Booth
  • Adjust effects
  • View photos in slideshow
  • Useful tips
• Alternatives to Photo Booth

Photo Booth on your iPad

Photo Booth is a very user-friendly app. To understand the app a little better, we explain how to take photos in Photo Booth on the iPad and how to share them.

Immediately when you open the app, you will see a handy overview of all possible effects. On your iPad you can choose from eight effects. Follow these steps to take a photo with Photo Booth:

1. Open the Photo Booth app on your iPad.
2. Choose from one of the effects. You can choose from X-ray, Light Tunnel, Stretch, Mirror, Spinning, Thermal Camera, Kaleidoscope, Compression or Normal. Then tap the effect.
3. Take a photo by pressing the round white button. Your photo will appear in the bar at the bottom.
4. To switch effects, press the three circles in the bottom left corner. This will take you back to the effects overview.

By default, the app takes photos with the front camera. You can easily switch cameras by pressing the camera icon in the bottom right corner. With the light tunnel, stretch, mirror, spinning top, kaleidoscope and squeeze effect, you can adjust the location of the effect by tapping anywhere on the screen.

Did you take a photo? Here’s how you can easily share it:

1. Tap the photo you want to share in the bar at the bottom of the app.
2. Press the share symbol in the bottom left corner.
3. Then choose what you want to do with the photo. Send the photo via iMessage, add it to a shared album, or save your artwork to Files.

Do you prefer to make videos with beautiful filters? Then take a look at our article about Clips.

Photo Booth on Mac

On your Mac, Photo Booth is a lot more extensive. You can choose from 24 different effects or filters and even record a video with them. These are the options on the Mac:

• Take a photo or video
• Adjust effects
• View photos in slideshow
• Useful tips

This is how you take a photo with Photo Booth on the Mac

When you open the app, you see yourself very large on the screen. Here’s how to take a photo with Photo Booth on your Mac:

1. Open the Photo Booth app on your Mac.
2. You can choose one of the effects by clicking Effects in the bottom right corner. At the bottom of the page you will see two arrows that allow you to switch between the pages of effects. You can choose from:
   • Space alien
   • Curly nose
   • Squirrel
   • In love
   • Dizzy
   • Muddle-headed
   • Pouty eyes
   • Frog
   • Sepia
   • Black and white
   • Disposable camera
   • Comic
   • Crayon
   • Glow
   • Thermal camera
   • X-ray
   • Bulging out
   • Denting
   • Spinning
   • Compress
   • Mirror
   • Light tunnel
   • Fisheye
   • Stretch

   Select one of the effects by clicking on it.

3. The image now changes to the effect. Press the big red button in the middle to take a selfie. Your photo will appear in the bar at the bottom.
4. You return to the effects overview by clicking on Effects in the bottom right corner.

Would you rather make a video? That is also possible! You will find three symbols in the left corner of the bar. If you want to film, click on the last symbol. The photo camera changes to a video recorder, which you can press to record. To stop your recording, press the white button with the red square. The other button in that row gives you the option to take four photos one after the other. These are then combined into one whole.

iPhone as camera for Photo Booth

Your iPhone’s camera often delivers better quality photos than the standard webcam in your Mac. Which can! You use the Continuity Camera for this. It goes like this:

1. Make sure you have a suitable iPhone and keep it close to the Mac.
2. Open Photo Booth on Mac.
3. Click the Camera menu and select the iPhone.
4. You now immediately have a better resolution, namely 12 megapixels.

This feature works if you have macOS Ventura 13 or later on Mac and iOS 16 or later on iPhone.

Adjust effects yourself

You can adjust the intensity of some effects on the third page itself. If something needs to be changed, a slider will appear below the photo. Slide these back and forth to see what you like best. With the light tunnel effect, you can determine the location of the effect, just like on the iPad. Open the effect and pick up the light tunnel with your mouse. Now you can move it.

View Photo Booth photos on your Mac

Over time, you may have taken quite a few photos with Photo Booth. You can view all of these in a nice slideshow. You can easily start this with the following steps:

1. Go to View in the menu bar.
2. Press Start Slideshow and the slideshow will begin.
3. You can possibly change the view by clicking on the symbol with four windows.

Tips to get more out of Photo Booth

You may have noticed that the app always counts down before taking a photo or video. By pressing the Option key and the photo button at the same time, your Mac immediately takes a photo. Do you want to temporarily disable the flash? Then hold down the Shift key while pressing the same button. Hold down both the Option and Shift keys to temporarily disable the countdown and flash.

Photo Booth Alternatives

Are you looking for an alternative to Photo Booth? Then take a look at these apps:

• Clips: this Apple app also has a lot of nice effects.
• Webcamoid: Take photos and videos with fun effects. You can add an effect to the video in real time.
• Snap Camera: Snapchat lenses, but for your live streams.
• Moments: the software for a photo booth at a party, where you connect a Canon DSLR.
• Sparkbooth: photo booth for your social media. Simulates a classic photo booth, with the ability to upload photos to Twitter, Facebook and more.
• SnapItUp: a photo booth app with 3D interface and various themes for kids, adults and special occasions. A short video is made for each photo, from which you can choose the best shot.

You can find more tips about photography here:

• The best photo filter apps for your iPhone and iPad
• Filters for photos in iMessage
• The 10 best photo apps for iPhone and iPad
• The best photo collage apps for iPhone and iPad