How to Let Clients Choose Photos Before You Edit Them

Letting a client choose which photos get edited is a simple idea with a lot of fiddly implementations. This is a practical comparison of the ways photographers actually do it, what each method costs you in time, and where each one tends to break.

Method 1: Contact sheets as PDFs

Export a grid of thumbnails with numbers underneath, send the PDF, ask the client to reply with the numbers they want.

Works when: the shoot is small, the client is offline-ish, or you want something they can print and scribble on.

Breaks when: thumbnails are too small to judge expression, the client replies with a typo in a number, or there are 300 frames and the PDF is 40 pages. You also have to translate their numbers back into filenames yourself.

Method 2: A shared cloud folder

Upload JPEGs to a shared drive folder and ask the client to copy the ones they like into a second folder, or send you the filenames.

Works when: the client is a business with shared drive habits already.

Breaks when: they move files instead of copying, rename them, download everything to their desktop and reply with screenshots, or drop 8 gigabytes onto a connection that cannot handle it. Sharing full-size files also blurs the line between showing and delivering, which is exactly the problem discussed in should photographers send RAW photos to clients.

Method 3: Email attachments

Send batches of JPEGs by email and collect replies.

Works when: there are twenty images and one decision maker.

Breaks when: attachment limits force you into five emails, replies arrive out of order, two people at the client answer differently, and the thread becomes the record of what was chosen. It is the method most likely to produce a genuine mistake in delivery.

Method 4: A gallery platform with favourites

Upload to a gallery service, share a link, and let the client heart or favourite the images they want.

Works when: you want a clean client-facing experience with no instructions needed, and you want the selection recorded in one place rather than in a thread.

Breaks when: the export and upload step is slow, the client is asked to create an account, or the picks come back as a list you still have to match against your catalog by hand. That last part is the hidden cost people underestimate.

Method 5: In-person selection

Sit with the client and go through the images together on a screen.

Works when: the job is high value, prints or albums are involved, and the conversation itself sells work.

Breaks when: scheduling it takes three weeks, the client is remote, or the session becomes a two hour edit-by-committee.

Method 6: Selection inside your Lightroom workflow

Publish a selection gallery directly from your catalog, let the client pick, and have the picks come back to the catalog as flags or a collection.

Works when: Lightroom Classic is where your work lives and the return trip is the part that has been costing you time.

Breaks when: you do not work in Lightroom Classic, in which case one of the gallery platforms is the closer fit.

Comparing the real costs

The visible cost of each method is how long it takes to send. The invisible cost is what happens after the client replies. Ranked roughly by total time on a 200 image shoot:

• Email attachments: fastest to start, worst to reconcile, highest risk of error.
• Contact sheets: cheap to produce, slow and error-prone to translate back.
• Shared folders: heavy upload, unpredictable client behaviour.
• Gallery platforms: good client experience, manual reconciliation at the end.
• In person: best conversation, worst scheduling.
• Catalog-integrated selection: minimal reconciliation, tied to one editor.

Rules that make any method work better

• Cull before you share. Never make a client wade through blinks and test frames.
• Say how many images they are choosing, up front.
• Give a deadline, and say what happens if it passes.
• Keep image identity stable, so a pick can never be ambiguous.
• Get the decision in one place, not spread over a thread.
• Confirm the final list back to the client before you start editing.

If you are still deciding whether to run a selection round at all, the argument on both sides is in what to do when a client wants to review photos before you edit, and the wider workflow context is in photo proofing for photographers.

Closing the loop with Clientpik

Almost every method above is fine at showing photos. What separates them is what happens when the client is done. Clientpik is built around that second half: you publish a selection gallery from a Lightroom Classic collection, the client picks without signing up for anything, and the picks come back into your Lightroom Classic workflow instead of arriving as a list of numbers. If that is the part of your process that hurts, start with how to let clients select photos from Lightroom Classic.