What is the best way to deliver photos to a client?

A link, on a page that carries your name, with an expiry you chose and a record of when it was collected. Whether that is a gallery product or a branded transfer depends on whether the client is choosing images or receiving final ones — selection needs a gallery, delivery only needs a good handover.

Should I send RAW files to clients?

Usually not, and not by default. RAWs are working files: enormous, unfinished, and not representative of what you deliver. If a client specifically wants them, treat it as a separate deliverable with its own price and its own conversation, rather than something that quietly rides along with the JPEGs.

How do I send a large photo gallery to a client?

Export web-sized JPEGs for viewing and choosing, and keep full-resolution files for the final delivery. A shoot that is 40 GB in RAW is often under 2 GB as delivered JPEGs, which turns an awkward transfer into an ordinary one.

How long should client photos stay available?

Long enough for them to actually download — one to two weeks for a delivery link, longer if you are offering an ongoing gallery. Three-day windows fail over weekends and holidays. Say the date in the email rather than relying on the service to warn anyone.

Should clients be able to download photos before paying?

Send watermarked or low-resolution files for selection, and release the full-resolution delivery when the invoice clears. This is normal practice and it stops being awkward the moment it is stated up front in the contract rather than raised at delivery.

How to Deliver Photos to Clients Professionally

The gallery is the last thing a client experiences, and most photographers hand it over through a free tool with somebody else's logo on it. A better method.

The shoot went well. The edit took three days. Then the whole thing gets handed over through a free service, on a page with somebody else’s logo, that deletes itself before the client has opened it.

The delivery is the last thing they experience, and it is the part most photographers spend the least time on.

Decide what you are actually doing

Two completely different jobs get muddled here, and the muddle is where most of the awkwardness comes from.

Selection. The client is choosing which images they want. They need to browse, favourite, and send you a list. That is a gallery, and it wants web-sized files.

Delivery. The work is finished and they are receiving it. They need to download it, once, and put it somewhere safe. That is a handover, and it wants full-resolution files.

Doing selection with a delivery tool means dumping 200 full-resolution images on someone and asking them to reply with filenames. Doing delivery with a gallery tool often means the final files sit behind a login your client will have lost by next year.

Decide which one you are doing, then use the right shape for it.

Send the right file, not every file

Almost every painful photo transfer is a file-size problem that was really an export decision.

RAWs are working files. They are enormous, they are unfinished, and most clients cannot open them. Sending them by default gives away your negatives and creates a 40 GB transfer to deliver a job that is 2 GB finished.
Web-sized JPEGs for choosing. Around 2000px on the long edge is plenty for a client to judge an image on a laptop, and a 200-image gallery becomes a few hundred megabytes.
Full resolution for the final set only, and only for the images they actually chose.

If a client genuinely wants the RAWs, that is a real request and it deserves a real answer: a separate deliverable, priced, with a sentence in the contract about what they can do with them. What it should not be is something that quietly happens because it was easier than exporting properly.

The handover itself

Whatever tool you use, these are the parts that make it feel professional rather than improvised.

Your name on the page. This is the whole argument for not using a free consumer service at the final step. The page a client lands on to collect their photographs is your last impression, and by default you are giving it to someone else’s brand. Nothing is broken. It just quietly says small, at the exact moment you would like it to say the opposite.

An expiry that survives a holiday. One to two weeks. Three-day windows die over a weekend, and re-uploading a wedding to solve a diary problem is a bad Sunday.

The date in the email, in words. Not “this link expires soon”. “The gallery is live until Tuesday the 24th.”

A receipt when they collect. So you know it landed, and so “did you get them?” never has to be sent. It is also useful evidence on the day someone says the files never arrived.

A password for anything sensitive. Weddings before the couple has seen them, commercial work under embargo, anything with children in it. Send the password by text, not directly under the link in the same email.

The invoice question

You are allowed to hold the final files until you have been paid. It is normal, and photographers tie themselves in knots about it because they raise it at the wrong moment.

The version that works: it is in the contract, in one sentence, agreed at booking. Watermarked or low-resolution files for selection, full-resolution delivery on cleared payment. Then at delivery time nobody is negotiating, you are just following the thing you both already agreed.

The version that does not work is discovering at handover that you would rather not send 4 GB of finished work to someone who has not paid, and having that conversation cold.

What I would use

If clients need to choose images, use a proper gallery product. Pixieset, Pic-Time and their competitors do this well, and I am not going to pretend a transfer link is a substitute for a gallery with favouriting in it.

If the work is finished and you are handing it over, you do not need a gallery. You need a delivery that looks like you: a link on your own domain, a page carrying your branding, an expiry you set, a password if it warrants one, and a note in your inbox when it is collected.

That second job is what Transfers does — 10 GB per send on Agency and 25 GB on Agency Pro, one to fourteen days of link life, download caps, instant revoke, and receipts with a name on them when you turn the email gate on. It is coming soon on the Living Page Agency plans.

And if you also send documents — pricing guides, wedding brochures, style guides for a commercial client — those become links on the same account rather than yet another 30 MB PDF sitting in an inbox. Which is its own argument.

I’m Richard, and I build Living Page — document and file delivery for people who send client work for a living. See how Transfers works, or try it free.