ShareBooth

Let's start! Create your booth, or join others!
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You are ready to create memories with your friends!

Inspiration

Everyone has someone they wish they could take a photo with right now — a best friend studying abroad, grandparents back home, or teammates scattered across time zones.

We're a group of international students who live this reality every day. Group photos shouldn't require being in the same room. So we asked ourselves: what if a photobooth had no walls?

That's ShareBooth. Distance disappears. Memories stay.

What it does

ShareBooth is a real-time, collaborative photobooth that puts everyone in the same frame — no matter where they are in the world.

Here's how it works:

Create a session and share a 4-digit code with your people
Everyone joins from their own device — phone, laptop, anywhere
Snap your photos, and they appear together on a shared canvas instantly
Customize everything — pick a layout, add stickers, change photo shapes to hearts, stars, or clouds, apply color filters, and add text
Export and share — one tap, one perfect group photo

No downloads. No editing skills. No awkward Photoshop merging. Just open a browser, join, and create.

We also built a set of hand-drawn stickers made specifically for HackHer — adding a personal, playful touch to every photo.

How we built it

Everything runs in the browser — no heavy server-side processing needed.

Frontend: Vanilla HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. All photo compositing happens client-side using the Canvas API, keeping the experience instant and responsive.
Real-time sync: Socket.IO keeps every participant's canvas perfectly in sync — when someone snaps a photo, moves a sticker, or changes the layout, everyone sees it immediately.
Camera & background removal: The WebRTC API captures live camera feeds, and MediaPipe Selfie Segmentation removes backgrounds in real-time at ~30fps — so you can place yourself on any backdrop.
Backend: A lightweight Node.js + Express server on DigitalOcean handles session management, file uploads, and WebSocket coordination.

The result: a fast, lightweight experience that works across devices and continents with minimal latency.

Challenges we ran into

Background removal in real-time — running ML-based segmentation at 30fps in the browser while keeping things smooth was a serious technical challenge
Cross-device consistency — different screen sizes, camera resolutions, and lighting conditions meant every photo looked different. We had to normalize and composite them into one cohesive frame
Latency across continents — syncing canvas state between users in different countries while keeping the experience feel instant
Making powerful features feel simple — the editing tools are deep (shapes, layouts, stickers, text, filters), but the interface had to feel effortless on first use

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Zero-install, one-click group photos — from any browser, any device, anywhere
Client-side compositing — all rendering happens locally, making the experience fast regardless of server load
Real-time collaboration that actually feels real-time — layout changes, stickers, and photo edits sync instantly across all participants
Hand-drawn HackHer stickers — created by our teammate, adding something genuinely personal that no template could replicate
It just works — our grandparents could use it, and our friends actually want to

What we learned

Real-time media sync is harder than it looks — but the payoff is magic when it works
Simplicity is the hardest feature to build — every "easy" interaction required careful UX decisions behind the scenes
The best tools disappear — users shouldn't think about WebSockets or Canvas APIs. They should just see their friends and smile
Building as international students gave us the problem and the perspective — we didn't just imagine the distance problem, we live it

What's next for ShareBooth

Larger groups — support for bigger sessions with even more participants
AR effects and live props — real-time face filters and accessories during the photobooth session
Public booths — open sessions anyone can join, perfect for events, concerts, or online communities
Performance optimization — smarter compression and adaptive quality to work seamlessly even on slower connections