Many photo booth operators use professional-grade printers (often referred to as "dye-sub" printers) for their printing needs. These printers result in exceptional quality with maximum efficiency, but typically do not include AirPrint technology, which is critical for printing from iPad apps.
To convert a non-AirPrint printer for use in Babeland Photo or Babeland Photo Pro, we've put together a list of suggestions as starting points. To note, none of these suggestions are ones that we make; we've used these in testing and our customers have reported success with them, but we cannot provide support for hardware and software we do not make.
Using A Computer As An Intermediary
Many users opt to use their computer as an intermediary. This allows you to bring a computer to your event, connect your printer to your computer, and run a piece of software on your computer that converters your physically connected printed into an AirPrint printer. Once your computer and iPad are on the same Wi-Fi network, you should be able to print natively in photo booth apps.
On the Mac side, we've used Printopia as a solution. This is an easy-to-use program that functions with many professional printers.
One the PC side, we've used AirPrint Activator to install the necessary AirPrint drivers for Windows, which then allows you to "share" your printer across the network. The TeckLyfe blog has a great write-up on where to find this software and how to set things up.
Hardware Solutions
A much more convenient way to sharing a printer via AirPrint is to use a hardware "converter," which allows you to connect your printer into the hardware, which then makes your printer available to your photo booth iPad app.
While many solutions exist on the market, we are big fans of BoothPrint. BoothPrint is not only ideal for its slim form factor and size, but the team developing this hardware has done an amazing job of testing many popular photo booth printers with their hardware. Other solutions are often generic; they may work, but BoothPrint is geared specifically to the photo booth industry, and we couldn't be happier with the results we've found in our testing.
Setting Up
To learn more about setting up your printer with Babeland Photo and Babeland Photo Pro, have a look at this article.