Theatre Production Photo Delivery: One Gallery per Show

The order matters more than any setting. Steps 2 and 3 are finished before step 4 starts, for reasons explained below.

Create one gallery for the production and name it after the show.

Inside it, make a section for each act, or for each scene if the show is long. A photo call or a separate costume parade can have its own section too.

Sections are an organising tool on your side. The company does not click into anything.

They see one scrolling page. Any photos not placed in a section appear first, under “Highlights”. Each section follows with its own heading.

A jump bar at the top lists the sections with a photo count for each, so the director can go straight to Act 2.

One gallery holds up to 1,000 photos under fair use. Sections sit inside that ceiling and do not add room. If a two-act show with a photo call runs past 1,000 selects, split it into a second gallery, for example one per act.

You can add photos after the link is shared, for example from a second dress rehearsal. The link stays the same and new photos are added at the end. The company is not notified, so tell them yourself.

The marketing team and the director may both want a say in press images. That works, with one rule.

Everyone with the link shares one set of picks. There are no per-person pick lists.

In the full-screen view, one tap stars a photo and a double tap loves it. A change made by someone else shows up after the page is reloaded.

When someone presses Send my picks, they enter a name and email, and the selection locks for everyone. You receive an email with the counts.

So name one decider before the link goes out, for example the head of marketing. The director and the press officer star and love freely. Only the decider presses Send my picks, once the director has signed off.

A workable convention: stars mean “worth considering” and loves mean “send to press”. Put that sentence in the gallery's welcome note, which appears under the gallery title.

If the decider sends too early, you can reopen picking. The existing picks are kept, but nobody is notified, so tell the decider it is open again.

More on shared picks is in the answer on several people choosing from one gallery.

Stars and loves give you two levels. Some companies also want to mark which images are for press now and which are for the archive or next season's brochure.

Colour labels do that. They are off by default, and you switch them on for this gallery only.

The palette is Lightroom's five colours. Each photo carries one label, and the labels are shared by everyone with the link, like the picks.

A simple key the decider can use:

Send the key with the link and repeat it in the welcome note.

If you work in Lightroom Classic, the ClientGallery plugin pulls the result back into your catalog. A star becomes 3 stars, a love becomes 5 stars and a Pick flag, and colour labels become Lightroom labels. The steps are in the guide to getting picks back into Lightroom.

If you edit elsewhere, a plain-text list of the picked filenames is available once picks are sent.

The photos on the gallery page are sized for fast viewing on screens. They are not the files a newspaper or a poster printer should receive.

For press, finish the picked frames and build a ZIP of them yourself. On a paid account, you upload it to the same gallery.

The company sees a separate button for it, with the file size and how many days are left.

The marketing team downloads the ZIP and files it with each outlet. If you send the gallery link to an arts editor directly, remember they will see the whole production, not just the press set.

What an editor needs alongside the files, such as captions, credits and cast names, is covered in the guide to sending photos to a publication.

If the images are under embargo until opening night, the procedure in the guide to sharing unreleased photos applies as it stands.

Once press picks are sent and the press ZIP window has closed, the company manager can pass the same link to the cast.

Set a gallery password if you have not already. It can be up to 60 characters, it covers every section, and a browser that has entered it is remembered for 30 days.

Cast members need no account and install nothing. There is no email step to view the gallery.

Decide with the company whether the cast may download before the link goes out. The downloads switch is how you apply that decision, and its limits need to be understood.

Two of those rows drive the order of the week.

First, a live press ZIP is visible to anyone with the link and password. Send the cast the link after its 3 days have run out, or accept that they can take it too.

Second, once picks are sent, crops of the picked photos in Story, Post, Square and Wide are offered even with downloads off. A cast may welcome that, but the company should know.

The gallery applies no watermark, and right-click is not blocked. If the company needs a watermark on cast copies, add it in Lightroom Classic's own export watermark panel or to the JPEGs before upload.

Sending the picks first has a further benefit: the selection is locked, so a cast member tapping a heart cannot change the press set. Colour labels are shared too, so pull them into your catalog before the cast link goes out.

If you want someone to see one act and nothing else, each section has its own link. That page is view-only: no downloads, picks, labels or full-resolution file, and the gallery password still applies.

A password stops strangers. It cannot stop a cast member forwarding the link and the password.

If you also shoot live music, the same one-gallery-per-show plan is written up for bands in the concert photo delivery guide.

Production photos come back months later: a transfer, a season brochure, an awards submission.

The hosted gallery does not expire. It stays up while your account exists, unless you revoke or delete it.

When a new request arrives, build a fresh ZIP of the frames asked for and upload it to the same gallery. The 3-day clock starts again and the company uses the link it already has.

clientgallery.io hosts JPEGs. It does not keep your RAW files or master video, so the masters stay on your own drives and backups.

Headshots for the programme and the lobby board are a different job from production photos. Keep them out of the production gallery.

If the marketing team chooses one headshot per actor, one headshots gallery with a section per actor works, with the same one-decider rule.

If each actor chooses their own, a shared gallery breaks down, because everyone would edit one set of picks and the first to send would lock it for the rest. Give each actor their own gallery instead. There is no per-gallery fee on the paid plan.

The per-person pattern is written up in the corporate headshot guide, and the actor-plus-agent case in the actor headshot guide.

Some companies sell production photos to audiences as prints. clientgallery.io has no print store and takes no commission, so a platform with a store built in, such as Pixieset or Pic-Time, fits that model better.

If every cast member must keep a private selection in the same gallery, this tool does not do that. There is one pick set per gallery.

If the press office needs a login for each journalist and a record of who downloaded what, look elsewhere. There are no guest accounts, and analytics are account-wide, with only an opened indicator per gallery.

If the photographer and an assistant each need their own login, there are no seats. A two-person studio shares one account.

This page states no external figure, quotes no competitor, and states no union or association rule. Rules on photographing performers and using their images are set by each production's agreements, which should be checked with the company. Pixieset and Pic-Time are named only as examples of platforms with a print store; no figure about them is stated. Every clientgallery.io behaviour below was checked against the product on 17 September 2026.

• clientgallery.io product behaviour (plan prices; free account of 1 gallery and 5 GB; fair-use ceilings of 1,000 photos per gallery and 250 GB per paid account; sections shown as one scrolling page with a jump bar; view-only section links; one shared pick set that locks on Send my picks; opt-in colour labels; password up to 60 characters remembered 30 days; what the downloads switch hides and does not hide; full-resolution ZIP live 3 days, re-uploadable, 100 GB of standing ZIPs; no gallery expiry; no watermark; no seats; the plugin writing 3 stars, 5 stars with a Pick flag, and colour labels), checked 17 September 2026, https://clientgallery.io/
• clientgallery.io Lightroom Classic plugin page (publishing from the Export dialog, client picks pulled back into the catalog), read 17 September 2026, https://clientgallery.io/lightroom