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Here’s where to find Korean-style four-cut photo booths in Singapore, how a session works, and six tips for a better strip. It’s the format behind the four small photos stacked in a column that end up in phone cases and on fridges.
In Korea it is called 인생네컷 — insaeng necut, from insaeng sajin, “the photo of your life”, and necut, “four frames”. Life Four Cuts, the brand that made it popular, opened in Daegu in 2017, and its name now stands for the whole style of booth.
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Why four photos, printed twice
The strip is made to be shared. The machine takes eight to ten photos, you pick four, and it prints two identical copies as standard.
The original brand has around 410 stores in Korea and told The Korea Herald it gets about two million visitors a month. The things you’ll find in a Singapore booth — the countdown, the frame choices, the basket of props, the QR code — all started there.
How a session works
It is a small studio with no staff, rather than a curtained box, and it goes in this order:
- Choose the layout. Four photos is the default, but there are also one, two, six and eight-photo layouts, and this sets how many shots you get.
- The countdowns. About a minute of them, back to back, taking eight to ten photos. You can’t pause.
- Pick your photos on a screen, usually with a border or frame design.
- It prints two strips in under a minute.
- Scan the QR code to get the digital copies and a short GIF or video.
Props are free everywhere, and the better studios have a styling area with mirrors and hair tools.
Where to go
LIFE4CUTS at Jurong Point is the original brand, above Boon Lay station. You can choose frame designs and backdrop colours, borrow costumes for free, including hanbok, and you get a GIF of the session as well as the prints.
Hana Film, at Orchard Central and CityLink, is the closest to the original Korean booths, with one improvement: you can retake each photo on its own instead of redoing the whole strip.
Solace is a local chain that added themed sets — a subway car and a washing machine at VivoCity, a train cabin at Orchardgateway — and runs the standard booths at Century Square and JEM.
Six tips
- Pick the layout carefully. You can’t change it once you start shooting.
- Plan three or four poses while you queue. The countdowns run straight after each other, so there is no time to decide in the booth.
- Wear something that stands out from the background. Most sets are white or black, and pale colours disappear on a black-and-white print.
- You get two strips, so decide who keeps which.
- Save the digital copies the same day. Solace’s download link only lasts 72 hours.
- You can’t book. Weekday afternoons are quiet, and there are queues on weekend evenings.
Prices and layouts change — confirm with the studio before travelling. If something on one of our listings is out of date, there’s a form at the bottom of every one.
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Opening hours, prices and details change. Please check with the venue before travelling — and if something here is out of date, the report form on any listing takes about twenty seconds.
