Full-Resolution Wedding Photo Uploads From Guests
Guests scan one QR and upload the original file straight to your gallery and to a cloud destination you connect — Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud Drive, or your own S3 bucket. Every upload returns a signed backup receipt with the file hash.
- ✓Original pixel count preserved — no resize, no recompress
- ✓EXIF, GPS, capture time, and camera model kept intact
- ✓Video uploaded at native codec and bitrate, no transcoding
- ✓Signed backup receipt with SHA-256 per file
- ✓Mirrors to a cloud destination you own and control
- ✓Works for HEIC, RAW pass-through, and 4K/60 clips
Why compression silently breaks long-term wedding archives
Most guest-upload apps resize photos before they ever leave the phone. A 48-megapixel iPhone shot becomes a 2-megapixel JPEG; a 4K video becomes a 720p clip. The host rarely notices on the night of the wedding because the gallery still looks fine on a phone screen. The damage shows up years later, when you try to print a canvas, recover a detail from a wide group shot, or hand the footage to an editor who needs the source. Compressed files cannot be uncompressed — the data is gone. Galeira treats the original bytes as the asset and the preview as a derivative. The host keeps the file the guest's camera actually produced, and Galeira generates the lightweight versions used inside the gallery, the slideshow, and the share links separately. That separation is the difference between an archive and a scrapbook.
- ✓Resized JPEGs cannot be restored to original detail
- ✓Re-encoded video loses bitrate that prints and edits depend on
- ✓Stripped EXIF erases capture time, GPS, and camera info
- ✓Compressed files look fine on phones but fail on print and edit
- ✓Galeira keeps the original and derives previews from it
What 'full resolution' actually means (pixel count, codec, EXIF)
Full resolution is more than image dimensions. It includes the pixel count exactly as the sensor recorded it, the codec the device wrote (HEIC, JPEG, HEVC, H.264, AV1), the color profile, the bit depth, and the metadata block the camera attached. Galeira accepts the original container without re-encoding it. An iPhone HEIC stays HEIC. A Samsung HEIF stays HEIF. A Pixel motion photo keeps its embedded clip. RAW files from a guest's mirrorless camera pass through as-is. The EXIF stays attached so the timeline view inside your gallery can sort by the moment the photo was taken, not the moment it was uploaded. If a guest uploads a Live Photo from iOS, both the still and the motion component are preserved. The host receives a backup receipt that records the exact file hash, so the original can be verified later byte-for-byte.
- ✓Pixel count preserved at the sensor's native dimensions
- ✓Original container kept (HEIC, HEIF, JPEG, RAW, MOV, MP4)
- ✓EXIF, GPS, capture time, and color profile retained
- ✓Live Photos and motion photos keep their embedded clip
- ✓SHA-256 hash in the receipt confirms the original byte stream
How Galeira stores and mirrors the original byte stream
When a guest uploads, Galeira streams the file directly to durable object storage and, in parallel, writes a copy to the cloud destination the host connected at setup. The host can connect Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud Drive, or an S3-compatible bucket they own. The upload is content-addressed: Galeira computes a SHA-256 hash as the bytes arrive and records it in a backup receipt the guest sees on their phone within seconds. The host sees the same receipt in the dashboard, with the destination, the timestamp, and the file size. Previews used inside the gallery are generated from the original after the fact, so the original is never touched by the resize pipeline. If the connected cloud destination is briefly unreachable, Galeira retries until the mirror succeeds and then updates the receipt. The host can re-export every original later as a single archive.
- ✓Original streamed once, hashed during upload, never re-encoded
- ✓Mirror to Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud Drive, or your S3 bucket
- ✓Signed receipt with hash, size, destination, and timestamp
- ✓Previews derived after the fact — original stays untouched
- ✓Retries on transient destination failures, then updates the receipt
Storage + bandwidth implications (and why the price is sane)
Full-resolution uploads are bigger. A typical wedding with 150 guests can produce 40 to 120 GB of originals once video is included. Galeira is priced for that reality instead of pretending it does not exist. The wedding plan includes the storage a normal celebration uses, and overage is metered in plain GB-months rather than hidden behind a tier upgrade. Because every original is also mirrored to a destination the host owns, the host is never trapped paying Galeira forever to keep the archive alive. If the host cancels the plan, the files in Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud Drive, or the host's S3 bucket remain untouched. Bandwidth is handled at the edge so guests on hotel Wi-Fi or rural LTE still complete uploads, and the host can throttle background mirroring during the reception so the live gallery stays responsive while the heavy lifting happens overnight.
- ✓Wedding plan budgets for real full-resolution volume, not toy sizes
- ✓Overage metered in GB-months, no surprise tier jumps
- ✓Mirror destination is host-owned — cancellation does not orphan files
- ✓Edge upload handles weak venue Wi-Fi and rural LTE
- ✓Background mirroring can be throttled during the reception
Video uploads: native codec, no transcoding, durations honored
Video is where compression apps quietly do the most damage. A guest's 4K60 HEVC clip from a recent iPhone or Pixel can be re-encoded down to 1080p30 H.264 by a generic uploader, losing more than 80 percent of the data the sensor captured. Galeira accepts the video container as the device wrote it. HEVC stays HEVC. ProRes from a cinema-mode capture stays ProRes. Length limits are set by the host, not by an arbitrary 60-second cap. The slideshow and the in-gallery player use a derived preview so playback is smooth on every device, but the file in storage and in the mirrored destination is the original. The backup receipt records the duration, the codec, and the bitrate so the host can confirm at a glance that the night's speeches and first dances arrived as filmed.
- ✓HEVC, H.264, AV1, and ProRes containers preserved as uploaded
- ✓Bitrate and frame rate kept at the device's native values
- ✓Host-set length limits replace arbitrary 60-second caps
- ✓Derived preview powers smooth playback without touching the original
- ✓Receipt records codec, bitrate, and duration for verification
Back up originals to a cloud you already own.
Galeira stores the event gallery so guests can view and download it, but the important part is ownership. When you connect a cloud destination, approved originals mirror to a place you control: Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, S3, or WebDAV. The backup-status page shows what copied, what is pending, and what needs attention.
External cloud-provider outages and account deletions are outside Galeira's control — which is exactly why the receipt matters. You can verify, retry, and export while your archive is active.
How Galeira compares to the methods people try
Each method gets photos somewhere. The differences are in friction, quality, privacy, and what you can recover afterward.
Questions hosts ask before they create the QR
Does Galeira really keep the original file, or just a high-quality version?
The original container is what lands in storage and in the mirrored destination. The SHA-256 hash in the backup receipt lets the host verify the bytes match what the guest's phone produced.
What happens to HEIC photos from iPhones?
HEIC stays HEIC. Galeira does not convert iPhone photos to JPEG on the way in. Previews inside the gallery are generated separately so the original container is never altered.
Are RAW files from a guest's mirrorless camera supported?
Yes — RAW files pass through as-is and are mirrored to the host's connected destination. The gallery shows a derived preview for browsing, but the original RAW is what gets stored and exported.
How big can a single guest upload be?
The wedding plan supports the file sizes modern phones and cameras produce, including multi-gigabyte 4K clips. Per-file and per-guest caps are configurable in the host dashboard so a single guest cannot accidentally exhaust the storage budget.
Will the slideshow during the reception slow down because uploads are full resolution?
No. The slideshow and gallery use lightweight previews generated from the original. The full-resolution mirror runs in the background and can be throttled during the reception so live playback stays smooth.
What cloud destinations can I mirror the originals to?
Google Drive, Dropbox, OneDrive, iCloud Drive, and S3-compatible buckets the host owns. The destination is chosen at setup and can be changed before the event.
If I cancel Galeira after the wedding, do I lose the full-resolution files?
No. The originals already live in the cloud destination the host connected, and that account belongs to the host. Cancelling Galeira ends the gallery service but does not touch the mirrored files.
Is EXIF metadata stripped for privacy reasons?
EXIF is preserved by default so the timeline view works correctly. Hosts who want to strip GPS or other metadata before public sharing can toggle that on a per-album basis — the originals in storage still keep the full metadata.
How do I know a specific guest's upload actually arrived at full resolution?
Every upload returns a signed backup receipt with the file hash, size, codec, and destination. The host sees the same receipts in the dashboard and can spot-check any guest's uploads at any time.
Does full-resolution upload work on weak venue Wi-Fi?
Uploads run against edge endpoints and resume on flaky connections. Guests on hotel Wi-Fi or rural LTE generally complete the upload, and the host can review any stragglers in the dashboard the next morning.
Keep reading
Create your event QR in about 60 seconds
Guests scan, upload, and view the gallery. You keep full-resolution originals backed up to your own cloud.