A photo proofing workflow that doesn’t eat your evenings

The quality of a client’s choice depends on what you show them. Take out the blinks, the near-duplicates and the frames you’d never deliver. Showing fewer, stronger images speeds up the decision and makes your work look better. A light colour pass across the set is worth it too; clients judge proofs by how they look, not by how they will look after editing.

How many to show depends on the package. If the client is choosing a fixed number of images, a proofing set two to four times that size gives them real choice without overwhelming them. Tell them the number up front.

Upload the culled set to a gallery made for selection. Group long sessions into sets — ceremony and reception, indoor and outdoor, family and children — so clients can compare like with like. Keep proofs protected: a visible watermark discourages screenshots being treated as finals, and a passcode keeps the gallery between you and your client.

In PhotoShr, create a proofing gallery, drop the whole set in with bulk upload, and drag photos into sets. Your watermark is applied to proofs automatically — or turn on watermark-free high-quality proofs for one gallery. Every new gallery is protected by a share passcode, and lightweight previews make browsing quick on a phone while selections still point to your original files.

Most proofing delays come from uncertainty, not indecision. Your message should say how many photos to choose, how to mark them, what happens next and when you need the selection. A deadline a week or two away works for most sessions; for weddings, allow a little longer.

• How many photos they’re choosing, and whether extras can be added.
• How to choose: tap the heart, then review and send.
• Whether several people can choose separately.
• The date you need the selection, and when the finals will follow.

If the gallery is limited to people you invited, PhotoShr sends the invitation email for you — you can resend, renew or revoke an invitation, and each invitation link carries its own expiry date.

Clients choose best when it’s easy: on the sofa, on their phone, without creating an account. In PhotoShr clients heart their favourites, see how many they’ve picked, review the selection on one screen and send it when they’re ready. On a passcode gallery they can start picking straight away and save their selection with only an email address; invited clients sign in with a magic link or a one-time code.

When a couple or a family is choosing, let each person pick separately rather than negotiating in one shared list. PhotoShr gives every person a private selection list and shows you all of them overlaid, ranked by votes — a quick way to spot the photos everyone loves and the few that need a conversation.

Once the selection is in, the job is to find those exact frames in your editing software without retyping anything. Export the selection from the gallery’s Client picks tab as a CSV — filenames, pick counts and who picked each photo — or as a plain list of filenames, and use it to filter your Lightroom or Capture One catalogue. Your gallery list shows the selection status of every gallery, so you can see at a glance who has sent picks and who still needs a nudge.

Deliver the edits in the same place the client chose them, so there is one link to remember. In PhotoShr you upload the finals to the gallery’s delivery tab and send them; the client gets a “your photos are ready” email and a delivery page with your logo, where they can download everything at once or single photos at full or web size. On the Studio plan, the page can also carry a personal message and a link to book again — a good moment to ask for a review or mention your next mini-session.

Our guide on delivering photos to clients goes deeper on file sizes, access and the delivery message.

Cull, share, instruct, collect, edit, deliver. None of the steps is complicated; what slows proofing down is doing them in different places. PhotoShr keeps the whole loop in one gallery, and proofing and selections work the same on every plan — see the pricing page for details, read the client proofing overview, or open an example gallery and try picking a few favourites as a client would.