Browse Event Photos by Folder, Place, or Photographer
Name the folders you already shoot into as albums. Participants open Finish, Celebration, or a photographer's set instead of one mixed grid of the whole event.
New in 9Pic AI: Photo Albums turn upload folders into a browseable gallery. Name a folder as an album, add a cover, and participants tap that set instead of scrolling every photo.
This is the public event gallery, not a private proofing album. Turn it on in Display Options, then name the folders you want people to see.
The folders already mean something. The gallery did not.
Event teams already shoot into folders. A race might land photos in start-line, km10, finish, and medal-ceremony. A wedding might use ceremony, family-portraits, and reception. A conference might split keynote, expo, and gala. Photographers often keep a folder per shooter as well.
Those folders were useful to the team. They were invisible to the participant. The public gallery was one timestamp-ordered grid. Selfie search and bib search answered "photos of me." They did not answer "show me the ceremony," "show me the finish," or "show me what this photographer shot."
That request kept coming from organisers. Photo Albums is the answer: keep the folder structure you already upload, then name the folders participants should browse.
Name a folder as an album
A folder becomes an album when you give it a name and turn it on. The dashboard lists the folders it finds on each photo source. You do not re-upload. You do not drag photos into a new collection. You pick the folders that should appear, write a readable title, and save.
A folder named prize-distribution can show as Prize Distribution. A nested folder such as day1/ceremony can show as Opening Ceremony. Participants never see the raw folder path. They see the album name, an optional description, a cover image, and how many photos are inside.
By place
Start line, 10K marker, finish, medal stage, or a wedding ceremony. People open the location they remember, not the whole event.
By photographer
Each shooter folder can be its own album. Useful when guests want one photographer's set, or when studios keep work separate.
By day or session
Day 1, Day 2, keynote, expo, or awards dinner. Multi-day events stop looking like one endless scroll.
What participants see
When Photo Albums is on, the photo page opens on an album list, not the mixed grid. Each album is a card with a cover, the name you chose, an optional short description, and a photo count. Tap a card to open that set.
Inside an album, a banner sits at the top. If you add more than one banner, they rotate as a carousel. Below that is the same scrolling gallery people already know. A back control returns to the album list. The selected album lives in the URL, so a finish-line link can be shared without sending someone into every photo.
Search does not change. FaceFind, bib search, and name search still look across the whole event. Albums are a browse path. Search remains the "find me" path.
How upload folders map to albums
The dashboard does not ask you to tag every file. Album membership follows the folder the photo was uploaded into. That is why the structure you use on shoot day is the structure participants can browse later.
- Folder uploads from Uplink or the browser. Each top-level folder can be an album. A folder such as
finishorraju-photographyappears in the editor. You name it, enable it, and optionally add a cover. Desktop Uplink and web upload both keep the folder tree on the way in. - Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, and similar sources. These imports are one album per source. Name that source as the album participants should see.
- Unnamed folders stay hidden. Detected folders appear in the editor. A blank name or a switched-off album never reaches the public list. That is how you keep a raw selects folder off the gallery.
You can name albums after photos are already processed. The gallery reads the folders that were uploaded. You do not reprocess the event just to turn albums on.
When place and photographer both matter
A common shoot plan is a place folder with photographer folders inside it: finish/raju, finish/anita, celebration/raju. Folder uploads can split a parent folder so the subfolders become the albums. Participants then open Raju at the finish, not a mixed finish dump.
If you split a parent, photos sitting loose in that parent (not inside a subfolder) only appear in All Photos, if you leave that album on. Split only the folders that actually have named children. Album splitting is separate from photographer credits. You can credit by shooter and still album by location, or the reverse.
Covers, descriptions, and album order
Each album can have:
- A display name, shown on the card and the album page.
- An optional description under the name.
- Banner images. The first banner is the grid cover. All banners cycle on the album page.
- A generated cover if you have not uploaded one yet, so the list is not a row of empty boxes.
All Photos is optional. If you turn it on, it is always last. Use it when someone still wants the mixed gallery. Use Album order in the same editor to put Celebration before Finish, or Day 1 before Day 2, without renaming folders.
How albums sit with search, timeline, and credits
Photo Albums is a display option on the photo page. It does not replace the rest of the event photography software stack:
- FaceFind and BibTrack still search every photo, including photos inside albums.
- The photo timeline is still the tool when someone remembers a time of day rather than a folder name.
- Photographer credits still name the shooter on the photo. Albums name the set people browse.
This is also not 9Pic Select. Select is a private proofing workspace for a client. Photo Albums is the public (or password-protected) event gallery, organised the way you already shoot.
Turn photo albums on
In the dashboard, open the event, go to Photos, then Configuration. Under Display Options:
- Enable All photos + continuous scroll. Albums need the full gallery, the same way the timeline does.
- Enable Photo Albums and save.
- Choose Configure albums.
- For each folder you want public, turn Show this album on, write a name, and add a cover if you have one.
- Optionally enable All Photos, then set album order.
Add a photo source first. If no folders appear, the source is empty or the folders have not been detected yet. Keep folder names boring and stable on shoot day: finish, ceremony, day-1. You can always write a friendlier album title later.
For a first event, the getting started guide covers upload and publishing. For folder ingest, start with Uplink so the tree you shoot is the tree you publish.
FAQ
Do I have to rebuild the gallery to use albums?
No. Name the folders that were already uploaded, enable the albums you want, and save. Participants see the new list without a reprocess.
Can a photo appear in two albums?
A photo lives in the folder it was uploaded to. It belongs to that album, and to All Photos if you leave that album on. If you need the same moment in two browse paths, keep the file in one folder and let search or All Photos cover the rest.
What happens to folders I do not name?
They stay in the editor and stay off the public list until you name them and turn them on. Use that for selects, rejects, or any folder you do not want guests opening.
Is this the same as Pixieset-style client folders?
No. Those products often group several galleries behind one client link. 9Pic Photo Albums organise one event gallery from the folders on that event, so a runner or guest can open Finish or Ceremony from the same page they already use for selfie search.
Photo albums are available now
Open an event in the 9Pic AI dashboard, enable Photo Albums in Display Options, and name the folders participants should browse. Guests can then open a place, a photographer, or a session instead of one mixed grid.
If you want help mapping a race, wedding, or conference folder tree, talk to the 9Pic AI team.