Client Photo Proofing: The Complete Guide

A proof is a preview, not a final. In a proofing round you publish web-sized images — enough resolution to judge a photo, not enough to be usable as a delivered file — and the client marks the ones they want you to finish. You then retouch only the selected frames and deliver those at full resolution.

Proofing earns its place when the client is paying per image, when the shoot produced far more keepers than the package covers, or when the client genuinely needs to choose (headshots, a family portrait for the wall, product shots). It also protects you: you never sink editing hours into a photo that ends up unused.

Skip it when you have already promised a fixed set of finished images and the selection is yours to make — a documentary wedding gallery, for instance, where the client bought "the whole day, edited." In that case, cull privately and deliver finished work. Proofing a gallery you were going to edit anyway just adds a decision the client did not ask for.

A proofing gallery needs three things: it has to be clearly yours, it has to let the client mark choices, and it must not hand over usable files before you are paid or finished. With clientgallery.io the gallery carries your branding and zero platform branding, so the client sees your studio, not a tool.

Practical setup steps that apply on any platform:

• Publish web-sized proofs, not masters. 2048px on the long edge is the standard proofing size — sharp enough to judge, useless as a print file. If you edit in Lightroom, the two-way plugin publishes 2048px proofs straight from your catalog, so you are never exporting and uploading by hand.
• Name the gallery for the client and the round. "Tremblay — Sélection" beats "Gallery 3." If you re-proof, the client should be able to tell rounds apart.
• Turn selection on before you send the link. Picks, favorites, comments, and colored labels should be live the moment the client opens the gallery.
• Decide what the client can and cannot do. Downloading of full-resolution files belongs after selection and payment, not during proofing.

The single biggest mistake in proofing is sending too many photos. Fifteen near- identical frames of the same pose do not give the client a richer choice — they give the client decision fatigue, and the gallery stalls. Your job is to cull hard first, then let the client choose among genuine keepers.

Rough starting points, adjust to your genre:

• Portraits / headshots: 2–4 distinct options per setup or pose. Cut the blinks, the awkward in-betweens, and all but the best of each near-duplicate cluster before the client ever sees them.
• Family / couples: 40–80 proofs for a typical session, grouped by location or setup so the choosing feels structured.
• Weddings: if you proof at all, proof the parts the client is choosing from — album spreads, parent selects, print picks — not the entire day.

clientgallery.io allows up to 1000 photos per gallery, which is plenty of headroom — but treat that as a ceiling, not a target. The tighter your cull, the faster the client decides and the sooner you get paid. Send the photos you would be proud to deliver, and none you are only including to look generous.

Clients rarely proof photos for a living, so give them a method instead of a wall of thumbnails. Two things do most of the work: a clear instruction and the right marking tools.

Tell them exactly how many to pick and how. "Heart your favorites — aim for about 25 for your package" converts far better than "let me know which ones you like." A number anchors the decision; an open request invites paralysis.

In the gallery, clients mark photos with picks/favorites as the primary choice, add comments on individual frames when they want a specific change ("can you remove the exit sign?"), and use colored labels to sort — for example green for "yes," yellow for "maybe," a color for "print this one big." Agree on what the colors mean up front so their labels are legible to you.

If two people are choosing — a couple, a family — expect disagreement and plan for it. Let them each pass through, then reconcile the "maybe" pile together. The comment thread on each photo keeps that conversation attached to the image instead of scattered across text messages.

A proofing gallery without a deadline is a gallery that sits open for two months. State the window when you send the link — "please make your selections within 10 days" — and mean it. A defined window is not pushy; it is the thing that lets you schedule your editing time and close the job.

Send one reminder a couple of days before the deadline and one on the day. If the client goes quiet past the window, a short note that finals are edited in the order selections come in usually restarts things. Build a little urgency into the process, not into fake "act now" pressure — the deadline is a real operational limit, so present it as one.

Scope creep in proofing looks like: the client picks more images than the package covers, requests retouching that goes beyond your normal edit, or reopens choices after you have started editing. None of these are the client being difficult — they are the natural result of an unstated boundary. Set the boundary in writing before the gallery goes out.

• Name the included count. "Your package includes 30 edited images; additional selects are 15 $ each." Now extra picks are a sale, not an argument.
• Define what "edited" means. Color and exposure are standard; object removal, body reshaping, or head swaps are add-ons. Comments that request the latter get quoted, not silently absorbed.
• Lock selections once editing starts. One reconciliation round, then the list is final. Re-openable choices are how a two-week job becomes a two-month one.

The proofing gallery is your record of what was agreed. When the picks are marked in one place and the count is written into your contract, "that is what you selected" is a fact, not a confrontation.

Once the picks are in and locked, edit the selected frames and deliver them at full resolution — cleanly separated from the low-res proofs so nobody is confused about which file is the keepsake. A delivery gallery is a different thing from a proofing gallery: proofs are for choosing, finals are for downloading.

On clientgallery.io, finished files go out as full-resolution downloads packaged into temporary ZIPs that auto-expire after three days, with up to 100 GB live at a time — enough for a full wedding delivery. If you edit in Lightroom, the plugin already pulled the client's picks back into your catalog, so you are editing exactly the frames they chose, then publishing the finals from the same place. For long-term storage of masters, an optional archive tier keeps them on Backblaze B2 rather than clogging your active gallery.

Fair use worth knowing: galleries hold JPEG photos only — no video, no RAW warehousing — up to 1000 photos each, within a 250 GB account cap (the free tier caps at 5 GB). That is built for delivering finished client work, which is exactly what the end of a proofing round produces.