How to Deliver Photos to Clients: A Step-by-Step Guide

How you hand over photos is part of the experience you are selling. A slow, confusing download can undo an amazing session, and a beautiful gallery can turn a happy client into a referral and a print order. Here is how to deliver photos to clients professionally, step by step.

Your options for delivering photos

For client work, a dedicated gallery wins every time. Clients can view the photos full screen on their phone, mark favorites, share with family and order prints, and you control downloads, privacy and how long it stays online.

Step 1: Cull and edit with delivery in mind

Deliver your best work, not every frame. A focused gallery feels more valuable and is faster to scroll. As a rough guide, 50 to 150 images for a portrait session and 400 to 800 for a full wedding day. Export full-resolution JPEGs at quality 85 to 90; they print beautifully and are much smaller than quality 100.

Step 2: Send a sneak peek

A handful of favorites within two or three days keeps the excitement high and buys you time for the full edit. Many gallery platforms, including Terracotta, let you star a few photos and share just those first, then release the full gallery later.

Step 3: Build the gallery

• Pick a cover that stops the scroll. It is the first thing clients see and the image they share.
• Split long galleries into sets like Getting Ready, Ceremony and Reception.
• Add your branding (logo, colors and ideally your own domain) so the gallery feels like part of your business.
• Decide on privacy. A password or email registration keeps personal moments personal.

This is the step that eats the most time. Terracotta's curated setup asks a few plain questions about the shoot and fills in every setting for you, from privacy to print store to expiration, and explains why it chose each one.

Step 4: Make downloading effortless

Clients should be able to download everything at once, or favorite the ones they love and download just those. Offer both full-resolution files for printing and web-size files for social media. Download PINs are useful if you want to control who can save images from a shared link.

Step 5: Turn on print sales

The weeks right after delivery are when clients are most likely to order prints and albums. A built-in print store with lab fulfillment lets them order directly from the gallery while you set the markup. A launch sale (say, 20% off for the first two weeks) gives them a reason to order now instead of someday.

Step 6: Send it with a personal note

Email the gallery link with a short, warm message: how much you loved the session, how to download, how long the gallery stays online, and how to order prints. Then follow up once, a week later, to make sure they got it.

Step 7: Set an expiration and plan for archiving

Keeping every gallery online forever is the fastest way to inflate your storage bill. Six to twelve months is typical. Send reminder emails before a gallery closes, then move it to cold storage (Terracotta calls it the Cellar) so you can restore it when a client comes back years later. Read our breakdown of gallery storage costs to see how much this saves.

Which platform should you use?

Every major gallery platform covers the basics. The real differences are price, which features need an upgrade, and commission on print sales. Our ranking of the best client gallery platforms compares eight of them side by side.