Everyone shoots. Nobody peeks.
A wedding. Sixty guests photograph all day, on their own phones, into one album. Nobody sees anything — not the guests, not the couple, not us — until the day you chose, when this time capsule opens for everyone at once. One link, no sign-up, and no server in between: the photos go from phone to phone. And every photo can carry a film look.
One album, three promises
Free for everyone. Nothing on our machines. A lock that does not depend on trusting us.
The link is the album
Make an album, send one link to the group chat, and everyone shoots into it. No account, no password, no group to configure.
No server holds your photos
Phones talk to each other directly, encrypted. There is no photo store to breach, and no bill that grows with popularity — which is how it stays free.
Sealed until a date
Lock an album as a time capsule. The key does not exist until the date, so nobody can look early — including the person who made it, and including us.
24 cinema film looks
Aurora, Nightfall, Noir, Tungsten, Gold and 19 more. Full colour transforms baked as 3D LUTs, not a tint laid over the top. Photos and video.
Grain, halation, leaks, frames
Four grain stocks sized to the format, nine frames from 35 mm to Pano, dust, scratches and light leaks. Every layer has its own strength.
Photos, videos, Live Photos
Albums carry photos, videos and Live Photos, and a Live Photo stays a Live Photo: hold it and it moves. iPhone and Android share the same engine, so the invite, the encryption and the time lock are identical on both.
What it does, and what it costs you
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Anyone with the link is in
There is no guest list to check, so treat the link like a key and send it only to people who should be in the album.
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Photos travel phone to phone
A photo reaches the others when its phone and theirs are online around the same time. After an event, open the app on Wi-Fi once or twice.
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A public relay, sometimes
In roughly 10–30% of cases two phones cannot connect directly and a public relay forwards encrypted traffic. It cannot read the photos. It is the one third-party machine involved.
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Editing works offline
The looks live inside the app. Shared albums need a connection between phones; editing does not need one at all.
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It never reads your whole library
iPhone is asked only for permission to save. On Android the system picker hands over just the photo you chose.
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No account. No ads. No watermark.
Free. The App Store lists the app as Data Not Collected. Requires iOS 17 or later, or Android 10 or later.
The guides, with the sources
How shared albums, time locks and film looks actually work — with references, and without the slogans.
Wedding photos from every guest, in one album, with no sign-up
How to collect wedding photos from every guest on iPhone and Android without accounts, a QR-code printing job or a cloud folder: one link, one album, optionally sealed until the day after.
A photo time capsule: an album that opens on a date nobody can bring forward
What a sealed photo album is, why it beats a promise, and how a time-locked album opens for everyone at once.
How time-lock encryption works: locking data until a future moment
Time-lock encryption explained without the maths: how a public randomness beacon (drand) lets you encrypt to a future round, why nobody can open it early, and what the real assumptions are.
Peer-to-peer photo sharing: how photos move between phones with no server
How a photo album can sync directly between phones with no server holding the photos: discovery on Wi-Fi and over the internet, encrypted transfer, the relay fallback, and the trade-off of two phones never being online together.
Sharing photos between iPhone and Android: one album both can join
Why sharing photos between iPhone and Android is still awkward, and how a single shared album that both platforms can join solves it, with no accounts and no cloud folder.
What a film look really is: 3D LUTs, and why filters are not the same thing
How a 3D lookup table (LUT) gives a photo a cinema colour grade, why it differs from a filter laid over the top, and how Halation's 24 looks are baked once so an iPhone and a Pixel agree.
Film grain, halation and light leaks: what each one is and when to use it
A plain guide to the physical effects behind the film look — grain by format, halation around highlights, dust and scratches, light leaks and frames — and how to use them with restraint.
How to judge a private photo-sharing app in five minutes
A short checklist for evaluating any shared photo album app: accounts, where photos are stored, who can open them, what leaves the phone, and whether the claims are honest.
Everyone shoots. Nobody peeks.
Download Halation for free. No account, no ads, no watermark.