In short
Where a community allows it, anyone looking at its album can ask for a photograph to be printed. They pick the picture, choose a size and a quantity, and receive a ticket number. The owner sees the request in a queue and either fulfills it or cancels it.
The check that shapes the whole experience is the resolution one. A community can set a minimum print quality, and a photograph that cannot meet it at the requested size is refused at the moment of ordering rather than at the moment of printing. More usefully, the refusal works out the largest size that photograph can manage and offers it — so the guest gets an answer, not just a rejection.
On this page
Turning it on, and the two modes
Print requests are off until the community owner enables them. Once on, there is a second decision that changes the character of the feature entirely.
| Normal | Open bar | |
|---|---|---|
| Name and email | Required | Not asked for |
| Who can order | Anyone who will identify themselves | Anyone at all, anonymously |
| How abuse is limited | By email address | By network address |
| Active-request limit | Applies | Does not apply |
| Suits | A club, a school, a paid event | A wedding, a party, a stand at a show |
What a guest fills in
| Field | Notes |
|---|---|
| Name | Up to 120 characters. Not required in open bar |
| Must be a real address. Not required in open bar | |
| Phone | Optional, up to 40 characters |
| Size | From the sizes this community offers |
| Quantity | Between one and twenty |
| Notes | Optional, up to 500 characters |
What comes back is a ticket number in the form PR- followed by the community’s number and a four-digit sequence. It is what a guest quotes when they come to collect, and what an owner searches for when somebody asks about an order.
Sizes
Six standard sizes can be offered: 4×6, 5×7, 8×8, 8×10, 11×14 and 16×20 inches. The owner chooses which of them appear under Available print sizes. A community that has never configured this offers 4×6, 5×7, 8×10 and 11×14 — the square 8×8 and the large 16×20 appear only once the host turns them on.
A community can also define one custom size with its own label — a square format, a panoramic, whatever the printer in the room actually does. It appears alongside the standard sizes and is only selectable when a label has been set.
The resolution check
The minimum is set in dots per inch, anywhere from zero to six hundred. Zero switches the check off entirely. Three hundred is the conventional figure for photographic printing; a community handing out 4×6 snapshots at a party can reasonably sit lower.
Bypass minimum resolution goes further: every photo is accepted at any size, nothing is refused or marked low resolution, and auto-print sends it. Small photos may print soft. It suits live events where every guest should walk away with a print.
Limits, and what stops abuse
| Limit | What it does |
|---|---|
| Three in fifteen minutes | Per email address, or per network address in open bar. Slows down a machine, not a person |
| Active requests per person | Counts requests that are waiting or done, but not canceled. One by default; up to fifty, or zero for no limit |
| Quantity | Never more than twenty of one picture on one request |
| The hidden field | A field no human sees. Anything that fills it in is told the request succeeded and quietly discarded |
After a guest sends a request
The guest sees a confirmation straight away. On the web it repeats their email address and ticket number (“We will contact you by email at … Your ticket number is …”). The wording depends on how the host set up prints:
| Set up | The guest is told |
|---|---|
| No charge for prints | No payment required. We will contact you by email. |
| The host charges for prints | We will contact you about payment by email. |
| Open bar, in the Linxy App | Prints are free. |
| Open bar, on the web | Your print is queued. It will be ready at the pickup station. |
The queue, and the two kinds of status
Each request carries two separate statuses, and conflating them causes most of the confusion in the queue.
| What it tracks | Values | |
|---|---|---|
| Request status | Where the order is in your process | Pending, fulfilled, canceled |
| Output status | Whether the print file itself came out properly | Ready, low resolution, still uploading |
Low resolution means the photograph can’t reach the community’s minimum at the requested size, so the output is capped at what the photograph actually contains. Low-resolution requests are never auto-printed. With the minimum at zero, or with Bypass minimum resolution on, nothing is marked low resolution. It is not a failure and the print will still come out — it will simply be softer than the size implies. Those requests can be found and cleared as a group when a queue has collected too many of them.
The queue can be filtered by status, and requests can be printed, retried, downloaded or deleted individually or in bulk. With Auto-print on, new requests go to the printer by themselves — instantly, or after a 30-second, 60-second or 2-minute cancel window. While the window runs, the request shows Auto-print in a countdown and a Cancel auto-print button.
Symptoms, causes and fixes
| Symptom | Cause | Fix |
|---|---|---|
| Print requests not enabled | The community owner has not switched them on | Enable them in the community’s settings |
| A guest is told they have reached their limit | The active-request limit, one by default | Raise it, or set it to zero for no limit |
| This photo is too small for a 8×10 print | It cannot meet the community’s minimum at that size | The message names the largest size it can manage. Order that instead |
| Every photograph is refused as too small | The minimum is set too high for the pictures being posted | Lower it, or set it to zero to switch the check off |
| Requests marked low resolution keep appearing | The pictures can’t reach the minimum at the sizes ordered | They will still print, softer. Clear them as a group, lower the minimum, or turn on Bypass minimum resolution |
| A guest says they ordered but nothing is in the queue | They may have been caught by the hidden anti-robot field | Ask them to order again without a browser extension filling forms in |
| Pick a valid size | The chosen size is not among the ones this community offers | Enable it, or pick from the ones offered |
| Two guests report the same ticket number | They are misreading it — the number includes the community | Ticket numbers are unique within a community |
Things people commonly get wrong
Branded and scannable prints
A host can add a branding bar to every print — the occasion’s name, colors and a logo — and, where Linxy has turned it on for the account, make prints scannable so the paper photo opens its album post in the Linxy App. See Print branding and scannable prints.
Related reading: Running the print station, Print branding and scannable prints, Uploading media, and When something is not working.