The Best Way to Send Photos to Clients for Selection

Sending photos for selection is a different job from delivering photos. Delivery wants quality and permanence. Selection wants speed, clarity and a decision that comes back in a form you can use. Optimising for the wrong one is why this step so often feels clumsy.

What good looks like

Before comparing tools, it helps to be clear about what you are actually asking for:

• Fast for the client. One link, no download, no account, works on a phone.
• Big enough to judge. Around 1600 pixels on the long edge is plenty; the client needs to see an expression, not count pores.
• Unambiguous identity. Every image carries a stable reference so a pick cannot be misread.
• A visible selected state. They can see what they have chosen and change their mind.
• A machine-readable result. The output should slot back into your editing workflow, not require typing.
• Safe for your originals. Nothing full-resolution leaves your machine at this stage.

Email

Attachment limits are usually around 20 to 25 megabytes, which is a handful of proofs. Fine for a tiny set, unusable above that. Replies come as prose, sometimes from more than one person, and the thread becomes the only record of what was decided.

WeTransfer and similar transfer services

Good at moving a large zip once. Bad at selection. The client downloads a folder, opens it in an OS previewer, and now the images live on their desktop while you wait for a reply that might be a list of numbers or might be a screenshot. Links also expire on free plans, which turns into an awkward second send.

Google Drive and Dropbox

Convenient because everyone has one. The problems are behavioural rather than technical: clients move files instead of copying, rename things, cannot work out how to share back, or try to view a hundred large JPEGs through a web previewer on a slow connection. Business clients handle this much better than consumer clients.

Gallery platforms

Purpose-built proofing galleries solve the client-side experience well: one link, favourite or select controls, mobile friendly, and the selection recorded in one place. The trade is on your side. You export proofs, upload them, wait for processing, and at the end you get a list you still have to match against your catalog. On a large shoot the upload and the reconciliation are the two slow parts.

Contact sheet PDFs

Still useful when the client wants something to print, mark up, and hand back, or when they genuinely prefer paper. Thumbnails are small, so it suits sets where composition rather than expression is the deciding factor. Translating the numbers back into files is manual.

Selection published from your catalog

The newest option is to publish the selection gallery from the software your photos already live in, and receive the picks back in the same place. This skips the export-upload step at the start and the filename-matching step at the end, which are the two most tedious parts of every other method. It only makes sense if your catalog is the centre of your workflow.

Choosing by situation

• Under 30 images, one client: email or a PDF contact sheet is fine.
• Consumer clients, phones, portraits: a gallery link beats anything that requires downloading.
• Corporate clients with several stakeholders: a gallery, so the decision lands in one place instead of three inboxes.
• High-volume real estate or event work: anything that avoids uploading full-size files and avoids manual reconciliation, because volume makes both hurt.
• Album and print selection: in person if the value justifies it, otherwise a gallery with a hard limit on the number of picks.

Practical details that prevent problems

• Cull first. Never send frames you would refuse to edit.
• Export proofs at a consistent size and with consistent naming.
• Say in one sentence that these are unedited previews for selection.
• State the number of images included and the deadline in the same message.
• Ask for the decision in one place, and confirm the final list before editing.

If you are weighing methods more broadly, the side-by-side is in how to let clients choose photos before you edit them, and the reason to run a selection round at all is in how client photo selection can reduce your editing costs.

A note on file safety

Sending proofs is not the same as sending originals, and it is worth keeping that boundary deliberately. If a client is pushing for the source files, the separate question of what to hand over is covered in should photographers send RAW photos to clients.

How Clientpik approaches it

Clientpik publishes the selection gallery from a Lightroom Classic collection, so there is no separate proof export and upload. The client opens a link, picks on desktop or phone with no account, and their picks come back into your Lightroom Classic workflow ready to edit. It is built for the two parts other methods leave to you. The full round trip is described in how to let clients select photos from Lightroom Classic.