Capture One
A Client Proofing Workflow for Capture One, Without Lightroom
Capture One already ships a client review product. This page says plainly what it does, what its own documentation says it does not keep, and where a separate client gallery does a different job.
Updated 5 September 2026
Most proofing guides are written for Lightroom Classic, because that is where the plugins are. If you cull and process in Capture One, the advice does not transfer. The round trip that makes a Lightroom workflow pleasant, publish proofs from the catalog and pull the client picks back in as flags and ratings, does not exist for Capture One from any gallery vendor, ours included.
What does exist is two separate things that solve two separate problems. Capture One has its own browser review product. A client gallery is a delivery surface. This page covers both honestly, then walks the exact steps for the gallery half: process proofs, share them under your own name, let the client mark two levels, and bring the result back into a Capture One session as a pasted filename list.
Start with Capture One Live, because it exists
Capture One Live is Capture One's own client review product. Any page arguing for a third-party proofing tool that pretends Live is not there is selling you something. Here is what Capture One documents.
Live "allows you to share collections of images online with anybody" in a browser, and "Your collaborators, reviewers, and clients do not need to own Capture One". Reviewers "provide their feedback by star rating, color tagging, and adding their comments". And the line that matters most: "Any ratings or tags added by reviewers sync back to Capture One in real time".
That real-time sync is better than anything we offer a Capture One user. We publish a two-way plugin for Lightroom Classic and nothing equivalent for Capture One. If what you want is a reviewer's stars appearing in your open session while you work, Live is the answer and this page will not talk you out of it.
The Live web viewer gives reviewers star rating keys 0 to 5 and colour tag keys q, w, e, r, t, y, u and i. The in-app Comments tool arrived in "Capture One Pro (16.3)".
What Capture One documents about Live's limits
These are Capture One's published statements, not a criticism. They describe the shape of the product: a review room for an active job.
| Behaviour | Capture One's own wording |
|---|---|
| Shared collection lifetime | "will stay active for one month" |
| Lifetime on a free account | "24 hours if you are a free user" |
| Comments after expiry | "will disappear when the collection expires" |
| Watermarks | watermark settings are "(paid subscription only)" |
| Smart Albums | "Smart Albums are currently unsupported with Capture One Live" |
A one-month window is a review window. It is exactly right for a selects round with an art director and exactly wrong for the link a wedding couple opens again in March. The comment thread expiring with the collection is the same trade: it is a conversation about a job in progress, not a record you keep.
On price, Capture One's pricing page defaults to the annual toggle and prints a bare dollar sign with no currency code anywhere, so read it on your own storefront. As displayed today: Pro subscription 26.25 a month, All in One 35.92, Studio 67.42, and a "Pro perpetual LICENSE $508.00" described as a "One-time purchase." No standalone Live price is published.
Which of the two, and when
The honest framing is not that one is better. It is that they are different objects.
Use Capture One Live when the review is short-lived, the people reviewing are collaborators rather than the paying client, and you want ratings and colour tags flowing straight back into the session you have open. Nothing else does that. If a job starts and finishes inside a month and the artifact you need at the end is a rated session, stop reading here.
Use a client gallery when the link has to outlive the job. When the client should see your studio name and not a software vendor's. When they will come back to download finished files. When you want the selection written to a file you can drop in the job folder next to the invoice. A gallery is a delivery surface that stays.
Plenty of studios run both: Live for the culling conversation with the retoucher, a gallery for the client-facing round and the handoff.
Step 1: process proofs and keep the filenames
Process a JPEG proof set out of Capture One the way you normally would. The only rule that matters for the rest of this workflow: do not rename on output. Every step after this one matches by filename, and a renamed proof is a proof that cannot find its RAW again.
Your originals are RAW and your proofs are JPEG, so the extensions will differ. That is handled at the end by an option in Capture One's own selection command. Only the stem of the filename has to survive.
Step 2: put the proofs in a gallery under your own name
Upload the proof set to a gallery on clientgallery.io. The gallery lives on your studio's own subdomain and carries no platform branding on any client-facing page, so the client sees your name and not ours.
Practical setup for a Capture One job:
- Group with sub-galleries. A gallery can hold sub-galleries one level deep. A photo belongs to at most one of them, photos in none sit at the top level, and a deeper folder drop is flattened on import. That is enough for "Studio", "Location" and "Details", and not enough to rebuild a Capture One album tree.
- Each sub-gallery has its own share link and can carry its own access code, which is how you send an art director the product frames without the portraits.
- Set an access code if the shoot is under embargo. It is opt-in per gallery, and it is enforced on the content, not just the page: both ZIP downloads are refused without it.
- Picking is on by default and can be turned off per gallery, so a pure delivery gallery does not have to invite a second round of choosing.
The ceiling is 1,000 photos per gallery. Treat that as a tripwire, not a target. A proofing round that ships 900 frames is a round that stalls.
Step 3: the client stars and loves
The gallery gives the client two marks in the same grid rather than one heart and a pile of lists. The levels are a star and a love, labelled "Star" and "Love" in the interface. A single tap stars a photo, a double tap loves it. The instruction the client reads is: "Open a photo, star what you like, love your favorites, then send your picks".
None of the four big gallery platforms gives a client two levels in the same grid. Several give multiple favourite lists instead, which asks the client to manage folders rather than rank a photo.
No client account is needed to mark photos. Picking is authenticated by the share link alone. Sending is deliberately different: the "Send my picks" dialog requires a name and a validated email, and the server rejects a submission without both. So the marking is frictionless and the submission is attributable.
When the picks land you get an email at your own address, subject "name sent their picks" with the gallery title, and the body states how many were loved and how many were starred. Push notifications fire on exactly two events, picks sent and a full-resolution ZIP download, each with its own per-device toggle; the iOS app has been live since 30 August 2026. There is no email on download, push only.
For the flat question of whether anything is happening, the studio dashboard shows an opened indicator on each gallery tile, and the clients page shows pick and comment counts per gallery. Opened or not, picks in or not. That is the honest set.
Step 4: Export picks (.txt), and what is actually in the file
Once the client has sent, a completed-gallery banner appears with a button labelled "Export picks (.txt)". Two things to be exact about, because they change how you plan the session.
First, the button is not sitting on every gallery. It appears only after the client has sent.
Second, the file is deliberately plain. It downloads as <gallery-title>-picks.txt and contains filenames only, one per line, with no header and no level column. Loves are listed first and stars after them, but the file does not label which is which.
That matters if you wanted a two-pass edit. There is a workaround that costs nothing: the notification email states the loved count and the starred count, so the first N lines of the file are the loves, where N is the loved count from the email. Split the file at that line and you have two lists.
Step 5: Select > Select By > Filename List
This is where Capture One quietly beats Lightroom Classic. Capture One documents a dedicated command for exactly this: "Capture One can also search for multiple images using a list of file names". The procedure is to "choose Select > Select By > Filename List", paste the names, pick a separator from the "Delimiter fly-out menu", and optionally tick "Ignore file extension".
"Ignore file extension" is the option that makes the JPEG-proof to RAW-original hop work. Tick it and the .jpg on every line stops mattering.
One precision that trips people up: this is a selection command, not a filter. It selects the matching images, it does not narrow the browser to them. Selection is transient, so the next click can lose it. Immediately apply something that persists, a star rating or a colour tag, then filter on that. Capture One's Filters tool filters on star rating and colour tag and shows live counts, where "the number next to the relevant color or star ... represents how many images fall under that criterion", so you can confirm the count matches what the client sent before you start editing.
If you split the file at the loved count, run the loves first and tag them one colour, then run the full list and tag the remainder another. One caution from Capture One's documentation: "Color tags are only supported in English".
Do not go looking for this in Advanced Search. Its criteria are Adjusted, Annotated, Color Tag, Date, Format, Height, Keywords, Orientation, Processed, Rating, Width and EXIF fields, with no Filename criterion at all. Filename List is the filename path.
Which platforms hand you the picked filenames as a file
Because the Capture One end of this workflow is a paste, the question that decides the gallery is simple: does the platform give you the picked filenames, and in what form.
| Platform | Picked filenames come out as | Documented wording |
|---|---|---|
| clientgallery.io | A .txt file | "Export picks (.txt)", filenames only, one per line, no header |
| Pixieset | A CSV file | "download all images from the list, and export a .CSV of filenames" |
| Pic-Time | A CSV file | "download the .csv file of their favorites" |
| ShootProof | Clipboard only | "Highlight and copy the filenames from the Filenames box" |
| CloudSpot | Clipboard only | select "Copy Filenames" |
Be fair about what that table means. For this specific workflow, a clipboard copy still works, because the Filename List command takes a paste. Clipboard-only is a real handicap for archiving the selection with the job, and a small one for getting the selection into a session today.
And the plain recommendation: if your studio lives inside a print lab, a store and a CRM, stay on Pixieset or Pic-Time. Their CSV does this job, and the rest of their product is doing work that a flat gallery does not attempt. Switch for the flat price, your own branding and the two pick levels, not because the export is impossible where you are.
What the gallery side holds and costs
| Item | clientgallery.io |
|---|---|
| Price | $10 a month, or $100 a year, which is $8.33 a month |
| Photos per gallery | 1,000 |
| Proofs per paid account | 250 GB |
| Free account | 5 GB and one gallery |
| Gallery lifetime | Hosted galleries never expire |
| Full-resolution delivery | One photographer-uploaded ZIP per gallery, live 3 days per handoff, re-uploadable at any time, 100 GB of standing ZIPs per account |
| Client download | Whole gallery in one click as a ZIP, or any single image; both deliver the proof JPEG, not the original |
The trade behind the flat price is worth stating: this hosts JPEGs. It does not warehouse RAW files or master video. Your sessions and originals stay where they are, which is why the price does not move with your archive. There is no print store, no commission and no per-gallery fee.
On loading speed, we publish no measurement, and you should not accept a speed claim from any vendor without a stated method and a date. What governs it is the size of the proof files you upload and the connection your client is on. Test it the only way that means anything: put one real set on a free account and open the link on a phone, on cellular, away from your studio.
Sources
Product behaviour was verified in the clientgallery.io source on 5 September 2026. All external pages below were fetched on 5 September 2026.
- Capture One, Quick Start Guide for Capture One Live (browser sharing, reviewers do not need Capture One, star rating and colour tagging and comments, real-time sync back, one month and 24 hours free, watermarks paid only, comments disappear on expiry, Smart Albums unsupported, viewer key bindings, Comments in Capture One Pro 16.3), fetched 5 September 2026, https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/4406763230481-Quick-Start-Guide-for-Capture-One-Live
- Capture One, Selecting images (Select > Select By > Filename List, Delimiter fly-out menu, Ignore file extension), fetched 5 September 2026, https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002486138-Selecting-images
- Capture One, Rating and tagging (live counts next to each colour and star, colour tags supported in English only), fetched 5 September 2026, https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002743718-Rating-and-tagging
- Capture One, The Filters tool (global image searches, filtering on star rating and colour tag), fetched 5 September 2026, https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360002526358-The-Filters-tool
- Capture One, Advanced Search (the full criteria list, which contains no Filename criterion), fetched 5 September 2026, https://support.captureone.com/hc/en-us/articles/360010482817
- Capture One pricing (annual toggle default, bare dollar sign with no currency code, Pro 26.25, All in One 35.92, Studio 67.42, Pro perpetual LICENSE 508.00), fetched 5 September 2026, https://www.captureone.com/en/pricing
- Pixieset, How can I review my client's Favorite Activity ("download all images from the list, and export a .CSV of filenames"), fetched 5 September 2026, https://help.pixieset.com/hc/en-us/articles/115002991071-How-can-I-review-my-client-s-Favorite-Activity
- Pic-Time, Where do I see my client's favorited photos ("download the .csv file of their favorites"), fetched 5 September 2026, https://help.pic-time.com/en/articles/7908443-where-do-i-see-my-client-s-favorited-photos
- ShootProof, Can I view client Favorites in Lightroom ("Highlight and copy the filenames from the Filenames box"), fetched 5 September 2026, https://help.shootproof.com/hc/en-us/articles/115009451587-Can-I-view-client-Favorites-in-Lightroom
- CloudSpot, How to copy image filenames from a favorites list ("Copy Filenames"), fetched 5 September 2026, https://help.cloudspot.io/en/articles/114574-how-to-copy-image-filenames-from-a-favorites-list
- clientgallery.io product behaviour (star and love levels, tap gestures, client intro copy, name and validated email on send, "Export picks (.txt)" in the completed-gallery banner and its file contents, picks email with loved and starred counts, push on picks sent and ZIP download, iOS app live 30 August 2026, opened indicator on gallery tiles, per-gallery pick and comment counts, sub-galleries one level deep with their own links and access codes, access-code enforcement on ZIP downloads, 1,000 photos per gallery, 250 GB of proofs per paid account, 5 GB and one gallery free, galleries never expire, full-resolution ZIP live 3 days with 100 GB standing per account, $10 a month or $100 a year), verified in source 5 September 2026, https://clientgallery.io
Frequently asked
Does Capture One have its own client proofing tool?
Yes. Capture One Live shares collections in a browser with people who do not own Capture One, reviewers give star ratings, colour tags and comments, and Capture One states that any ratings or tags added by reviewers sync back to Capture One in real time. Its published limits are that a shared collection stays active for one month, 24 hours on a free account, and comments disappear when the collection expires.
So why would I use a separate client gallery at all?
Because the two do different jobs. Live is a review room for an active job and it expires. A gallery is a delivery surface that stays, on your own subdomain with no platform branding, where the client comes back later to download finished files. If your round is short and you want ratings in your open session, use Live.
Is there a Capture One plugin for clientgallery.io?
No. The two-way plugin is for Lightroom Classic only. The Capture One route is a file: you export the picks as a .txt of filenames and paste them into Capture One's own Select, Select By, Filename List command. Nothing is written into your session automatically.
How do I get client picks back into Capture One?
Capture One documents a dedicated command. Choose Select, then Select By, then Filename List, paste the filenames, choose a delimiter from the Delimiter fly-out menu, and tick Ignore file extension so JPEG proof names match RAW originals. It is a selection command, not a filter, so apply a star rating or colour tag straight away and filter on that.
Can I tell the loves apart from the stars in the exported file?
Not from the file itself. It is filenames only, one per line, with no header and no level column, and loves are listed before stars without being labelled. The notification email states how many were loved and how many were starred, so the first N lines are the loves. Split the file at that line to get two lists.
Which gallery platforms give me the picked filenames as a file?
Pixieset exports a .CSV of filenames and Pic-Time downloads a .csv of favorites. ShootProof and CloudSpot are clipboard only: you copy the filenames from a Filenames box or a Copy Filenames action. clientgallery.io exports a .txt file. For pasting into Capture One a clipboard copy works fine; the difference matters most when you want the selection archived with the job.
Do my clients need an account to pick photos?
No account is needed to mark photos, since picking is authenticated by the share link alone. Sending is different: the Send my picks dialog requires a name and a validated email, and the server rejects a submission without both, so every submission is attributable.
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