Graduation Photo Gallery for Families: Ceremony Day Delivery

The class gallery is for everyone who was there. Its job is distribution: many families, each looking for their own graduate, each wanting to save a few frames.

The family gallery is for one household. Its job is a decision: which frames go on the announcement, which go in the album, which go on the wall.

Putting both in one gallery breaks both jobs. On clientgallery.io, everyone who opens a gallery link shares one set of picks. When someone sends picks, picking locks for everyone on that link. A class gallery with picks switched on would let the first parent to press send close the selection for every other family.

So the rule is simple. Picks off where there are many families. Picks on where there is one.

1. Create it before the ceremony. The link does not change when you add photos, so the school can put it in the programme or the follow-up email before you have uploaded a frame.
2. Arrange it in sections studio-side. Procession, ceremony, stage walk, after the ceremony. Families see one scrolling page with a jump bar at the top that shows how many photos each section holds.
3. Switch picks off and leave downloads on. The page then tells visitors their photos are ready and offers a download on each photo, plus a “Download all photos” button.
4. Set a password. It covers the whole gallery, every section included, and the face index as well.
5. Decide on face search with the school. See the next section.
6. Publish a first batch the same night. The stage walk is what families want first. The rest can follow into the same gallery.

One gallery holds up to 1,000 photos under fair use. A large ceremony that goes past that needs a second gallery, which means a second link. Split by something families can follow, such as morning and afternoon ceremonies, rather than at an arbitrary photo count.

A stage walk produces one or two frames per graduate among hundreds. A parent scrolling for their own child is exactly the case face search is built for.

What is true about it, stated precisely:

• It is off by default. You switch it on for one gallery at a time.
• A visitor gives a selfie, and matching runs entirely in their own browser.
• The selfie is never uploaded.
• The gallery's face index sits behind the gallery password.
• It works on the main gallery link, not on a section's own link.

A parent can also search with a photo of the graduate rather than a selfie, since the search compares faces, not identities.

What the product does not give you is a consent step. The visitor sees a short explanation and a file picker. Some graduates are minors, so this is the school's decision, not yours. Ask in writing, and leave the feature off if the school has not told families it will be available.

Matching is a similarity search. Mortarboards, tassels across the face and profile shots on the stage all weaken it, and a lookalike can appear. The full gallery stays browsable either way. The mechanics are covered in face recognition in a guest gallery.

The family gallery is a small proofing round with a hard external deadline.

1. One gallery per family. Galleries are unlimited under fair use, so there is no cost reason to combine families.
2. Sections by grouping. Graduate alone, with parents, with grandparents, with friends. The jump bar makes a forty-frame set quick to scan.
3. Picks on. A single tap stars a photo. A double tap loves it.
4. A welcome note with the task and the date. It appears under the gallery title, so the instruction travels with every forward.
5. Send the link and password to the parent who booked. That parent is the one who presses send.

Sending picks asks for a name and an email address. When the family sends, you get an email saying how many photos were loved and how many were starred.

The two levels are generic on the page: star and love. Give them a meaning in the welcome note, and the family's choice becomes a usable brief.

A welcome note that works: “Love the one or two photos you want on the announcement. Star the rest of your package. Send your picks by the date below so the announcement file is ready before your printer's deadline.”

If you edit in Lightroom Classic, the two-way plugin pulls both levels back into the catalog, so the announcement frames are separated from the rest before you start. More on the two levels is in the pick levels guide.

Graduation deadlines come from outside the studio: the announcement printer, the party date, a yearbook submission. Ask the family for the earliest of those dates when they book the ten minutes on the lawn, and work backwards.

The only per-gallery signal is that opened indicator, with filters for galleries seen by the client and galleries not opened yet. There is no per-family browsing report, so do not write a reminder that pretends to know what they looked at.

Reminders go out from your own email. The wording for each one is in the reminder email templates. A reminder never needs to threaten that the gallery will disappear, because hosted galleries do not expire.

The “Download all photos” button gives the hosted photos, which are sized for screens and sharing. That suits the class gallery.

An announcement or a large print needs the full-resolution file. A paid account can attach a full-resolution ZIP to the family gallery. It stays live for 3 days per upload and can be uploaded again at any time, so tell the family to save it when it arrives.

If you would rather send the retouched set in a fresh gallery, the method for one link carrying both is in sending full-resolution photos to clients.

You can paste your own payment link on a gallery, but downloads do not unlock when a family pays. Switching downloads on is something you do yourself after checking.

There is no print store and no commission. If your graduation business depends on families ordering prints and announcement cards from inside the gallery, a platform with a built-in store, such as Pixieset or Pic-Time, fits better.

If the school needs a packaged, roster-matched delivery for every graduate, with per-family ordering, a dedicated school photography system is the better tool. clientgallery.io fits the photographer who is paid for the day and delivers files.

This page states no external figure. Every number on it is a clientgallery.io product fact, checked against the product code on 24 September 2026: the plan prices, unlimited galleries under fair use, the fair-use ceilings of 1,000 photos per gallery and 250 GB per paid account, the 3-day full-resolution ZIP with 100 GB of standing ZIPs, and the absence of gallery expiry. The pick behaviour (one shared pick set per gallery that locks when sent, star and love levels, name and email on send, the loved and starred counts in the studio email) and the face search behaviour were checked in the same code on the same day.

Pixieset and Pic-Time are named only as examples of platforms with a built-in print store; no figure about them is stated.