Multiple People Choosing Photos From One Gallery: How Shared Picks Work

Yes, several people can choose photos from one gallery at the same time.

They all share one link, and the gallery password if you set one.

Nobody installs an app and nobody creates an account.

Every star and every love they add goes into a single selection that belongs to the gallery, not to the person.

If one person stars a photo and another person removes that star, the star is gone for everyone.

The gallery does not record who picked what.

When one of them presses Send my picks, the selection is locked and you are notified.

The table below lists every selection tool a client can touch and whether it is shared across everyone who holds the link.

Changes made by one person show up for another person when that person reloads the page.

They do not appear live while someone is mid-scroll.

Two people picking at the same moment on two phones will each see a slightly stale view until they refresh.

Picks happen in the full-screen view.

The client opens a photo and uses the star or heart button.

On the photo itself, one tap adds a star and a double tap adds a love.

The grid only shows a small badge on photos that already carry a pick.

A star and a love are two levels of the same choice, which is useful when several people weigh in.

One common arrangement is that anyone may star a photo they like, and only the decider upgrades a star to a love.

That arrangement is a house rule you explain in your message, not something the gallery enforces.

The detailed mechanics are covered in the star and love pick levels guide.

Send my picks sits in the tray at the bottom of the gallery.

It also takes the place of the Next button on the last photo.

Pressing it opens a confirmation that asks for a name and an email and states that it locks the picks.

Once confirmed, the gallery stops accepting pick changes from anyone.

The star and heart buttons disappear for every viewer, and so does the tray.

Colour labels and comments keep working after the lock.

The name and email typed at that moment replace the client name and email stored on the gallery.

That detail matters with several people: the last sender becomes the client name on the gallery, and that is the name comments are signed with.

You are told right away. You receive an email with the number of loved and starred photos, the event appears in your activity feed, and the iPhone app sends a push if picks notifications are on.

If a second person expected to add more, the gallery will now refuse their changes.

This is the one moment where a multi-person selection goes wrong, and it is why the decider has to be named in advance.

Put one sentence in the message that carries the link.

Something like: “Everyone can star their favourites; Julie reviews the list and is the only one who presses Send my picks.”

The gallery welcome note is a second place for the same sentence, because it shows under the gallery title for everyone who opens the link, including relatives who never saw your email.

Pick the decider by who is paying and who has the final say, not by who is most excited.

For a couple, that is whichever partner agreed to handle it.

For a family session, it is usually the parent who booked.

For senior portraits, it is often the parent rather than the senior, as the senior portrait proofing guide explains.

Add a date to the same sentence so the decider knows when the shared list closes.

Several people choosing means several opinions, and those opinions tend to scatter across group chats.

Two optional tools keep them in the gallery instead.

Colour labels, switched on per gallery, let the group agree on a code such as green for yes and yellow for maybe.

Each photo holds one label, shared by everyone, and tapping the current colour clears it.

Comments, also switched on per gallery, let anyone leave a note or a drawing on a photo.

The gallery never asks a commenter for a name.

Every comment is signed with the client name set on the gallery, or “Client” when none is set.

So if three relatives comment, you see three notes under the same signature.

Ask people to start a note with their first name when it matters who said what.

You receive at most one comment email per gallery every 15 minutes, which keeps a busy family from flooding your inbox.

It happens: an eager partner sends a half-finished list.

In the studio, the gallery shows a Reopen picking button.

Reopening unlocks the selection and keeps every pick already made.

The client is not notified, so tell them yourself that the gallery is open again.

When the decider sends the final list, you get a fresh email.

The wider question of changes after a selection is handled in what to do when a client wants to change their photo selection.

Some jobs really do need separate selections, such as two divorced parents each ordering their own set.

Inside one gallery that is not possible, and there is no setting that changes it.

Section links will not help either, because a section link is view-only and has no picks.

The honest option is to upload the same photos into two galleries and send one link to each person.

Paid accounts have unlimited galleries under fair use, so a second gallery costs nothing extra; the free plan holds a single gallery.

You then reconcile the two lists yourself.

If named client accounts with private favourites are central to how you sell, choose a platform built around client accounts; clientgallery.io deliberately has none.

Once the picks are sent, the studio page offers Export picks as a text file.

It lists one filename per line, loved photos first, then starred ones, with no marker between them.

If you edit in Lightroom Classic, the plugin pulls the picks back into the catalog by filename.

The table shows what each level becomes.

Because the gallery holds one shared set, you get one clean list, not three competing ones.

For a family gallery shared with many relatives, the family session gallery guide covers distribution, sections and downloads.

This page states no external figure.

Every product behaviour and number above describes clientgallery.io as checked against its own code on 16 September 2026: the shared pick set, the two pick levels, the lock on Send my picks, the notification email, Reopen picking, colour labels, comment signatures and the 15-minute email limit, the picks export, the Lightroom Classic mapping, and the plan figures published on the clientgallery.io pricing section (fetched 16 September 2026).