The Designerby Bpro
The proofing guide

Let your client choose

Most shoots start with a question: which ones? A proofing gallery answers it without a spreadsheet of filenames. Your client hearts their favourites, leaves notes, and sends the selection back — and you pull it straight into an album, a frame, a wall or a store. Nothing is for sale and nothing downloads, so it needs no prices and no payments.

On this page

What a proofing gallery is

A private gallery of one shoot. Each client you invite gets their own link and chooses up to the number you allow, by the date you set. When they send, their selection is locked, so you work from exactly what they chose — until you let them change it.

Everything they send lands in Selections in the header, and you get an email.

Make the gallery

  1. New proofing gallery
    On the Proofing tab. Give it a Gallery name — your client sees it at the top and in every email.
  2. Bring the photos
    Upload the shoot, or under Start from pick an album or frame you've already built and its photographs come across. Every photograph you add is in the gallery straight away.
  3. Curate
    Take out anything you'd rather they didn't see, set the order they scroll in, and star the cover. Then Gallery looks right — next.

How many, and by when

In the gallery's Proofing panel:

  1. They can choose
    As many as they like, or Up to a number — say, the photographs an album package includes. You can give one client a different number when you invite them.
  2. Choose by (optional)
    With a date, invited clients get a reminder three days before and on the last day. After it, choosing closes for anyone who hasn't sent, and you get a summary of who did and who didn't.
Show ideas after they send is worth a look once you're comfortable: after sending, your client sees their favourites as a wall, a framed piece and an album spread, with no prices. If one speaks to them, “I'd love this” tells you.

Open it and invite

Press Open gallery — until then, links don't work. Then, on the selection board, Invite a client by name:

  1. Name, email, and their limit
    Leave the limit blank to use the gallery's. Email is optional.
  2. Email it, or send it yourself
    Tick Email the invitation now and it goes out under your studio name. Or use Copy their link and send it by text or message — it's theirs alone, and keeps their choices on any device.

Inviting by name is what makes the reminders, the personal limit and the board's per-client view work, so prefer it to sending one shared link.

What your client does

What your client seesYour gallery, with a line telling them how many to choose and by when. They tap the heart to choose, open a photograph to Add a note (“Could this be black and white?”), and watch a counter — “12 of 30 chosen”. When they're happy, they press Send my selection, confirm, and it's locked.

Read the selection board

Open a gallery from the Proofing tab to reach its selection board. Each client is a chip at the top — tap one to see only what they chose, their notes and their message. With several clients (a couple, their parents), the lenses help:

  1. Everyone's picks
    Anything anybody chose.
  2. Agreed by all
    Only what every client chose — the safe shortlist.
  3. With notes
    Everything someone wrote about.

See it as the client does shows the gallery from their side.

Put the picks to work

Tick photographs — Tick their selection on a client does it in one go — then Add to a project. Choose an album, store, frame or wall, existing or new, and they are copied in at full resolution. Nothing is uploaded twice.

Copy filenames gives you the list for Lightroom or wherever you edit.

When they want to change it

A sent selection is locked. If your client asks to change it, open them on the board and press Let them change it — they're emailed, and can choose again even after the deadline. What they sent before stays on the board until they send again.

Afterwards: open print sales

When choosing is over, Open print sales on the board turns the same link into a store: their hearts become favourites, and they can order prints and frames from the photos they already know. You can email everyone who chose to say so. How a store works is in the store guide.

Print sales need card payments set up on your account; until they are, the board will tell you there'd be nothing to buy.