Photomaly Orders Guide

Read the request as well as the numbers

The numeric lines are only half the brief. A customer asking for a passport photo wants a tight, straight headshot; someone posing for an album cover wants the pose they are already holding; a full-body request needs you zoomed out far enough to fit them in frame. The ticket will not fail you for framing, but the request is what the photo is for — and the store page is explicit that finding the right angle is part of the job.

Confirm the ticket twice

Read it at the counter, then read it again in the Print Setup window before pressing START. Almost every wasted print in a run comes from setting copies or size from memory instead of from the ticket that is still on screen.

With the ticket decoded, the next question is which of the three routes this particular job takes.

Framing beats retakes

You can shoot as many photos as you like; only printed sheets cost stock. Take a second or third shot when a pose is cut off or the zoom is too tight, then pick the best one from the album. Photos you do not need should be deleted so the good file is never one misclick away from the wrong print.

Editing is allowed, and sometimes wanted

The paint app on the print screen lets you draw on a photo before printing — handy for the requests that explicitly ask you to make them look good. Save inside the editor or the printer will happily output the untouched original.

Not every customer wants a portrait, though. Plenty walk in with the photos already taken.

Print each file, not the best file

"One print of each" means every image on the drive gets printed once, not that you pick a favourite. Work down the album, set the size once, and start each file in turn before you collect the stack.

Not every drive is what it claims

At least one visitor will hand you a drive that is not a print job at all. There is no way to inspect it safely first, and the story expects you to plug it in — but treat unusual, insistent requests as story beats rather than normal orders. Background on who walks through the door is on the customers page.

The third route is the slowest one, and the one the game teaches with a dedicated tutorial: physical film.

The ticket reads differently

A film job shows as film prints with an output setting and a frame count rather than a format and a copy count. The frame number tells you how many photos the roll should produce, which is how you know you have cut the whole thing before the chemicals start.

Develop while the counter is busy

Chemical timings run whether you are watching or not, so start a roll, walk back to the front, and take the next customer while it soaks. Step-by-step darkroom detail, including how to tell a ruined negative from something stranger, lives on film developing.

Keep the private rolls separate

From the second shift a recurring visitor leaves rolls of his own to develop and collect later, and those results are explicitly not for customers. Park them somewhere away from the counter so a finished customer envelope never gets swapped with them.

Three routes, three very different amounts of work — the table below is the fastest way to pick the right one under pressure.

Reorder before you are empty

Buy from the Store app on the studio PC, then collect the box from the delivery pallet in the back alley. That walk is the reason to reorder at "low" rather than "out" — a customer standing at the counter while you fetch paper is a stall you created two minutes earlier.

Big copy counts are the real drain

A single nine-copy request can consume most of a fresh paper stack and a visible chunk of ink. When a ticket asks for a high print count, check both meters before you press START rather than halfway through the job. Spending priorities and which upgrades ease the pressure: upgrades.

Stock problems are predictable. The last category of order problem is not.

Deliver the order anyway

Odd content in a customer's own photos does not void their request. Print what the ticket asks for, hand it over, and keep the documentation side of the job separate from the retail side — the two never share a checklist.

Do not pry too deep

The store page warns you against digging into your patrons' lives, and the game backs that up: developing someone's roll shows you far more than a normal shopkeeper would see. Reading quirks is useful; hunting through them has consequences, which the endings page covers.

Once orders are automatic, the darkroom is the system worth mastering next — it is the slowest step and the one with the most room to gain time.