In short: downloading a Confetti album gives you the finished photos as ordinary image files on your own computer, in the order you arranged them. Nothing is locked inside the app, and nothing is written back to your Google Drive. The album is yours to keep, back up, print, or share by link, on your own terms.
What does "downloading an album" actually mean?
Once you've built an album, with the Standard builder or the Intelligent one, Confetti packages the photos you chose for it into a download you can open with any photo viewer. It lands in your browser's downloads folder like any other file. From that point it's a regular set of photos on your own computer, not something you need Confetti open to see.
What's actually inside the download?
The download is the finished album exactly as you built it: the photos you kept, in the order you arranged them, full quality. It is not a link, not a preview, and not a copy that expires. Once it's on your computer, it behaves like any other photo folder: you can move it, back it up, drop it into your own photo library, or attach individual photos to an email.
Where do the original photos live?
They stay in your own Google Drive, exactly where they were before you connected the folder. Confetti reads your photos with read-only access. It never edits, moves, or deletes anything in your Drive, and it never writes an album back to it. See how Confetti keeps your photos private for the full custody model. The download is a separate, independent copy that belongs entirely to you, on a device Google has nothing to do with.
What does Confetti not do with my photos?
Confetti does not keep a private copy of your full photo library on its own servers as the "real" version of your album. It stores the organizing layer, tags, people, and the album definitions you build, never the photo library itself. Once you download an album, that download is the durable copy. If you ever disconnect your Drive or stop using Confetti, the photos you already downloaded are unaffected: they're just files on your computer.
Do I need to be logged into Confetti to see it again?
No. After you download an album, opening it works exactly like opening any other folder of photos: double-click, no login, no app required. You can also come back into Confetti later to rebuild the same event into a different album or download it again, but the file on your computer doesn't depend on that.
How is this different from a photo gallery link?
A hosted gallery lives on someone else's server and can expire, get taken down, or change access rules without warning. A Confetti download is a file you hold. There's no expiration date on a folder on your own hard drive. For the fuller case for why that matters, see the album you actually keep.
Related
- How to download your finished album to your computer
- How Confetti keeps your photos private
- The album you actually keep
Ready to build an album you'll actually keep? See pricing and start with your first event.