As a professional photographer, you put a lot of effort into every project. You get contracts from clients; attend events; capture beautiful and mind-blowing pictures, and edit them. All of your pictures are polished and ready to be delivered to the clients.
But, have you ever noticed that your picture delivery options sometimes harm the picture quality and resolution? You surely want to send pictures to your client through some methods that will perfectly deliver your outputs to clients without compromising quality.
Let us know how professional photographers give photos to clients without compromising on quality.
Things to Keep in Mind When Choosing The Best Sharing Process (Tips)
Having your work completed, you’ll need to send photos to the client. Although we are going to suggest some best picks to share files, it’s better to know some essential things that you should keep in mind when choosing one.
Let us know what they are:
- Is your method free of charge or do you have to pay for it? If it requires money, then think about the amount and whether it’s a monthly package or you are charged for each image.
- Think about the storage option. Every photo-sharing website has a different storage option. You need to know how much space your free version is capable of offering and if you need to break the batch or not.
- Some specific photo-sharing options set an expiration date. Most of the time limit is between 7 and 14 days. If you choose a platform like this, then you have to keep the clients updated about this, and it’s better to avoid platforms like this if you can.
- Do you know how quickly the photos will be delivered to the clients?
- Your selected platform of file sharing should keep the image resolution constant.
Seven Most Effective Ways
Here are the seven most effective file-sharing platforms for professional photographers to provide photos to clients:
- Google Drive
- WeTransfer
- Smash
- Dropbox
- Shootproof
- Lightroom
- Zenfolio
Let’s take a look at each photo-sharing app separately to help you determine which one is right for you.
Google Drive
One of the easiest and simplest ways of sharing files with customers is through Google Drive. By using Google Drive, you can send files faster than others. Google Drive is protected by Google itself and is safe for both personal and business purposes. This online platform offers 15 GB of file sharing in one go. You can also give viewing, editing, or downloading access to anyone. One of the exclusive things about Google Drive is that it is already popular with almost all kinds of people. So, clients can easily understand and receive the files you share with them.
If you need more than 15 GB of file sharing benefits, then you can go for a paid version that starts at $1.99 per month. The paid version will offer you 100 GB of storage.
WeTransfer
One of the most popular files transferring platforms is Wetransfer. You can send 2 GB files per transfer completely free here, but yes, it has a paid version that offers 20 GB sharing in one go. We transfer allows its users to upload a ZIP folder that is transformed into a shareable link.
You can send the link to your clients; they will be able to download files within 7 days of the initial file upload.
Smash
The main attraction of the Smash photo-sharing site is that you can share large files and huge quantities of photos here. This platform doesn’t really have a file transfer limit. Smash files have an expiry of 14 days after sending the photos. This site is simple to use and one of the easiest among all the transfer platforms. It’s a drag-and-drop layout where you can share any kind of picture with no loss in quality. High-resolution pictures, large files, and no time limit are the main benefits of using it.
But, if you’re thinking about transfer speed, then it’s better not to share more than 2 GB of files. Larger files make the transferring process slower.
Dropbox
Dropbox’s free plan, like WeTransfer, enables you to utilize up to 2 GB of storage. It is regarded as the first smart workstation in the world. Your Dropbox link doesn’t expire after a certain number of days, so you can keep using it for as long as you want your photographs to be visible to your clients.
It offers a cloud-based file-sharing service that is widely utilized. You can enjoy both the free and paid versions of Dropbox. The free version allows you to share files with up to 2GB of storage, whereas using the paid version you can get 3 TB of storage with a monthly plan of $19.99.
Drag and drop your photographs into the Dropbox folder after downloading and installing Dropbox on your computer. Your data will thereafter be automatically backed up. All the files will be instantly uploaded to the cloud, and you’ll be given a URL to share with your clients. As long as you don’t relocate or remove the files, the link will never expire, and you and your clients will have access to your images.
Shootproof
Shootproof, an alternative platform to Pixieset, is among professional photographers’ favorite sites to share photos with their clients. This photo-sharing platform creates custom galleries where you can make individual galleries with each client’s work and share those galleries through email or direct link sharing. The complete process is so simple that all of your customers can easily understand and download their event photos.
Shootproof allows you to add a watermark to the pictures. So, if you are worried about any misuse, then simply select the watermark option and send them the link.
Lightroom
Many people don’t know that Lightroom offers the facility of sharing images directly with clients. Photographers are already familiar with Lightroom; they use this for image post-production. So yes, after editing the images with Lightroom, you can simply share those images with the clients.
You will have to send the files through email. So, in this case, you may face some limitations in Lightroom because email file-sharing has its own limitations for larger images. But apart from this, this is a pretty good file-sharing option for photographers.
Lightroom’s monthly package starts at $9.99 and gives you access to 1 TB of storage space.
Zenfolio
Photographers use Zenfolio to publish, share, showcase, and sell their work in real-time. This file-sharing network also includes a proofreading function that lets you arrange photographs and movies into searchable categories. Your customers may provide their feedback here, choose their favorites, and then choose the final versions for printing and downloading. You can also give customers, guests, and visitors special rights and allow in-gallery commentary.
Also, there is a watermark option in Zenfolio that you can use to safeguard your images from unauthorized use.
Endnote
Today’s blog briefly discusses the most popular and useful photo-sharing platforms that most professional photographers use worldwide. If you are the one who was confused about your file-sharing platform selection and wanted to know how professional photographers give photos to clients, then we hope you have already got your top picks and selected one for sharing your files with the clients.
