On-Screen Delivery, Global Text Variables, and Operator Trading Cards — Show & Tell Recap (June 3)

This session turned into exactly what Show & Tell is for: an open floor. We walked the changelog, found a bug live on stream (it happens), and got schooled by operators on trading cards, QR codes, and the dark art of Yahoo email delivery.

Watch the full session above, or skim the highlights below.

On-Screen Delivery is here — born from a privacy problem

The biggest release of the week: the new On-Screen Delivery flow stage shows the AI output right at the booth (or in the virtual booth) and lets guests download directly — no email required.

We resisted this one for a long time, and the reason is throughput math. If guests linger to watch their AI render, 30 seconds at the booth becomes 3–5 minutes — that’s the difference between 60–90 guests an hour and about 20. What changed our mind was a real operator scenario: a client whose privacy officer wouldn’t allow collecting guest email addresses at all. On-Screen Delivery solves that cleanly — the output comes back down to the guest’s own phone in the virtual booth flow.

One practical note from the discussion (thanks, Rick): the render starts processing before the delivery stage, so pairing it with a short sponsor video or branded interstitial can make the wait effectively disappear. It’s rolling out to all accounts now; if you don’t see it yet, you will within the week. Setup details in the On-Screen Delivery guide.

Global Text Variables — the unglamorous feature you’ll use constantly

Define a text token once — couple’s name, event date, player number — and reuse it across every template in the event. Change it in one place and it updates everywhere. We had an event with about 60 templates in it; before this, updating the client name meant editing all 60. Now it’s one field.

Also new in the same spirit: toggle templates on and off instead of deleting them. Every operator knows the client who rejects version one, iterates to final_final_v3, and then decides at the 11th hour that the first one was best. Now you just flip it back on. (How-to: toggling templates on and off.)

Prompt duplication and versioning — freeze your work in time

You can now duplicate a custom prompt with one click — a request straight from an operator on this call (asked Thursday, shipped Friday). Every generate is also a saved version, so you can revert to any earlier prompt settings or thumbnail.

Related, and worth understanding: when you add a prompt to an event, Pictor freezes it as of that moment. If you spend 40 hours tuning a prompt and we ship a new model the next day, your tuned prompt keeps working exactly as you left it. The flip side: if you update a prompt later, you need to re-select it in your templates and flows — it won’t silently change under an event a client already approved. That’s deliberate. Nobody wants surprises on show day. Full details in the prompt management guide.

Operator showcase: World Cup-season trading cards

Rick walked us through a virtual booth built for soccer’s biggest summer: guests pick their country, enter a player number, and get an AI trading card — number rendered in the AI image and printed on the card template. It’s a great example of prompt surveys driving both the artwork and the layout, plus QR pre-registration so guests fill everything out while waiting in line.

Two design notes we discussed for card-style outputs: include the original photo alongside the AI render (people love the before/after), and for digital-first delivery, present the card as a “stack” mockup rather than a flat print layout — it shares better.

Real talk: Yahoo email delays

An operator flagged that guests on Yahoo addresses sometimes see long email delays — our logs show delivery within minutes, Yahoo’s inbox shows it much later. Everything on our side tests 9–10/10 on mail-tester.com and we’ve filed tickets with Yahoo, but their own documentation allows up to 72 hours. The practical mitigations: use On-Screen Delivery as a safety net alongside email, and pre-warn clients whose audiences skew Yahoo. If you’re putting client-supplied subject lines on emails, run them through mail-tester first — it gives you objective data when a subject line looks spammy.

QR codes: never print a raw URL

Asked in Q&A: how to get the booth QR code as an image. Our deliberate answer — don’t. Generate your own QR through a redirect service like QRCode AI (the one we use at our own events) so the printed code’s destination can be changed later. Events change at the 11th hour; a printed QR pointing at a dead URL can’t. Bonus: redirect services give you scan analytics you can share with clients — scans vs. completions is a genuinely useful number. More in our QR code best practices guide.

Also covered

• Open-ended text questions in prompt surveys are live — use sparingly (we’ve all met a teenage boy with a Mad Lib)
• Per-device backgrounds: separate phone / tablet / desktop backgrounds in global styles — setup guide
• Bug fixes: country selector, virtual booth backgrounds — and we caught a QR-stage background override live on the call, now with the dev team
• Coming: survey answers reusable inside prompts (asked twice = asked once too many — it’s on the roadmap), and V2.0 with a full UX/UI overhaul

Join the next one

Show & Tell runs live most Wednesdays — bring your builds, your bugs, and your wish list. Half of what shipped this month started as an operator request on one of these calls. Save your seat here.

— Eve