Send client photo proofsas one link

The client must choose, not keep

Delivery and proofing look like the same task — send photos to a client — and they have opposite requirements. Delivery wants the files in their hands at full quality, permanently. Proofing wants the opposite: enough to judge by, nothing to keep, and a decision at the end.

Every setting on this page falls out of that one distinction. Web-resolution exports rather than originals. Downloads off rather than on. A deadline rather than a permanent link. Comments rather than a silent gallery. If you use your delivery workflow for proofing, you have effectively delivered — and the awkward conversation about the balance of the invoice gets much harder.

The reverse is also true: do not proof-share your final delivery. When the shoot is signed off, send a second link with the full-resolution files and downloads on. Two links, two jobs, no ambiguity.

Comments on the link, not in a 40-message thread

Comments are a real feature here (Pro), and for proofing they are the one that saves the most time. Switch comments on for a link and the page gets a small feedback box; your client types their picks there and you are emailed when something new arrives.

What this replaces is the part of proofing that actually costs you time: the reconstruction. Three messages, two phone calls and a voice note later, you are still not sure whether they wanted 12 or 21. A written comment attached to the photo is unambiguous and it is still there in six weeks when they change their mind.

• Comments live on a link's own page. In an album, every photo has its own page — so a client can comment on frame 27 specifically, which is exactly the granularity proofing needs.
• You enable comments per link, in that link's settings. There is no single switch that turns them on for every photo in an album at once; if you want per-frame comments across a whole set, you turn them on frame by frame, which is fine for a 20-shot select and tedious for 200.
• The album view itself has no comment box — comments belong to a link, and an album is a container of links. The pragmatic setup most photographers land on: export a numbered contact sheet as a PDF, upload that as its own link with comments on, and send the album for browsing plus the contact sheet for the decision. The client leaves one comment listing their numbers. One notification, one list, done.
• Notification email is throttled to about one an hour per link, so a client leaving eight comments in a row does not fill your inbox.

View-only: the download button goes away

Turn a link view-only and the download control disappears from the page. The photo still displays — it has to, that is the point — but the frictionless one-tap save is gone.

Be precise about what that buys you. It stops the casual save: the client who idly downloads the whole set to their desktop and, three months later, uses a proof in an ad because it was the file they had. It does not stop a screenshot, it does not stop the browser's developer tools, and it does not stop a phone camera pointed at a monitor. Anyone telling you their gallery prevents those is describing a wish.

So use it as friction, not as a lock, and pair it with the thing that actually protects you: send proofs at proofing resolution. A 2,000px JPEG that leaks is an inconvenience. A 45-megapixel original that leaks is your product.

We do not watermark your images — and here is what to do instead

This is the honest one, and it matters most to photographers, so it gets its own section rather than a footnote. Link in Seconds has a watermark feature, and it overlays the PDF preview only. It does not watermark JPEGs. If you came here looking for automatic per-image watermarking across a proof gallery, we do not have it and you should not build a workflow assuming we do.

We would rather lose the sale than have you discover this after a client shoot. Option two is genuinely good, though — a watermarked proof PDF plus a numbered album link covers most of what a proofing gallery gives you, at a fraction of the setup.

• Option one — skip watermarking. Send small web-resolution proofs, view-only, behind a password. For most portrait, family and event work this is enough: the file is not usable at print size and the download path is gone.
• Option two — use the PDF route. Export your selects as a contact sheet or a proof PDF from Lightroom, Capture One or Bridge, upload that, and turn the watermark on. You get a per-viewer watermark on the preview, and the client gets a numbered sheet to choose from, which many clients actually prefer to a grid.
• Option three — burn the watermark in before upload. Lightroom's export dialog, Capture One's process recipes and Bridge's output module all do this at export time, permanently and to your own design. If watermarking is non-negotiable for you, this is the correct place for it to happen — in your editor, not in a hosting tool.
• Option four — use a proofing platform. If per-image watermarks, print sales and studio management are core to your business, ShootProof, Pic-Time and CloudSpot are built for exactly that and we are not.

Know they have seen it before you chase them

Every open is timestamped, and on Pro you can be emailed the moment a link is viewed. For a freelancer this is the difference between a follow-up that reads as attentive and one that reads as nagging.

Read it like this. Opened once, three days ago, no reply: they looked and got busy — a short nudge is fine. Opened four times in two days, no reply: they are deciding, or they are showing it to a partner, and the useful message is 'happy to talk through the selects if it helps' rather than 'just checking in'. Never opened, five days after you sent it: the email did not land, or it went to spam. Re-send it a different way before you assume anything about the client.

What you get is the fact of the open, its time, and rough device and location. There is no per-photo dwell time, no heatmap and no 'they looked at frame 12 for nine seconds'. Anyone who has used a proofing platform's analytics knows how much of that is noise anyway.

An expiry that ends the selection window

Proofing drags because nothing forces it to stop. A link with an expiry date does. Set it for a week, say so in the email — 'the proofs are up until Friday the 14th' — and the deadline enforces itself without you having to be the person who chases.

Two practical notes. Set the date a little past the day you actually want a decision, so nobody is locked out at the exact moment they finally sit down with it. And tell them the date in the same message as the link; an expiry that arrives as a surprise reads as punitive rather than professional.

You can also disable a link instantly at any time, which is what you want when a shoot goes sideways or a client asks for the set to come down. It goes offline immediately and you can put it back later.

Where this sits next to ShootProof, Pic-Time and CloudSpot

Those are photography businesses in a box: proofing plus print fulfilment, studio management, client galleries with brand skins, sales flows, and per-image watermarking. If print sales are a meaningful line in your revenue, buy one of them — nothing here competes with a proper storefront and we will not pretend it does.

What this is for is the other case, which is more common than the platforms' marketing suggests: you need sixty proofs in front of one client this afternoon, you do not want to onboard a platform, brand a gallery or configure a price list to do it, and you are not selling prints on this job. Then a link that takes a minute to make, costs a fraction of a proofing subscription, and works on the client's phone with no account is the proportionate tool.

Cost is part of the honest comparison. Pro here is $7 a month or $29 a year, with 10 GB of storage — a fraction of a proofing platform's annual plan, because it does a fraction of what one does.