Best Way to Send Photos to Clients without Losing Quality

What We’ll Cover

In this Picflow guide, we explore different methods for sharing photos with clients without compromising quality so that your customers can enjoy the highest-quality photos.

Why Is It Important to Send High-Quality Photos to Clients?

Build Brand and Credibility

A photographer's brand is more or less tied to the ways people view their work. If the method you use to send photos to clients leads to a decrease in quality, your brand is what bears the consequences (even if it isn’t your fault).

Choosing a method that ensures a photo’s quality is essential to building and maintaining your brand as well as your credibility.

Earn More Sales

In addition to building your brand, sending quality photos increases the chances of making more sales. If clients can’t see what you offer in its full glory, then they’re less likely to buy—it really is that simple!

Win Repeat Business

In e-commerce, 41% of all revenue generated by a store comes from returning customers. While we don't have statistics for photographers specifically, anecdotally, we can confidently say that repeat clients are the lifeblood of many photography businesses. 

Quality images help to create a positive impression that leads customers back for more in the future.

How to Send High-Quality Photos to Clients (3 Methods)

1. Client Galleries

Online client galleries are digital image showcases that offer safe, secure storage of your images while also allowing for easy and efficient sharing with clients. This method of delivering photos ensures that they're always available in the highest possible resolution and quality—and that makes it the most reliable way to deliver images.

To give you an example of what a client gallery can do, here’s one that was designed with Picflow.

Our Hamilton Cuisine gallery displays 20+ high-quality images and videos in a dynamic, responsive layout. Everything—from the fonts and colors to the sections and slideshow—can be tailored to the brand’s voice.

Underneath the aesthetics, you’ll find a range of client-focused features:

• Image Annotations: Clients can mark up images to give you feedback on specific changes or elements.

• Comment & Activity Threads: Each photo has its own comment thread, so clients can provide detailed feedback. You can also view a rundown of all image activity.

• Tags & Flags: Clients can flag important images and tag individuals to make sure everyone’s on the same page.

• Unthrottled Downloads: Clients can easily create and download lists of photos in their original quality (or choose from a range of sizes).

In addition to these client-facing features, there are also features designed to make your life easier—things like watermarking, bulk actions, keyboard shortcuts, access controls, password protection, rapid uploads, expandable storage, and more. Plus, Picflow supports RAW uploads and video resolutions up to 4K, so you won’t be limited when it comes to the types of media you can present.

The bottom line? An online client gallery like Picflow is the best way to protect and share your work with clients.

2. Cloud Storage

File storage and sharing tools are another viable option when it comes to sharing high-quality photos with clients. These tools let you upload files to the cloud and share them with clients through a secure link. 

The beauty of this system is that you’re probably already using one or two of these tools in your everyday life. The downsides are that they offer minimal protection, minimal client-proofing features, and less professionalism than online client galleries.

Popular options include:

• WeTransfer

• Dropbox

• Google Drive

• OneDrive

You’ll usually share photos with clients by uploading your photos, limiting access to the folder to the client, and sending an invite link. The tools listed above do not compress images, so you don’t have to worry about losing any quality when sharing with clients. As long as the client has an account with the tool you use, they will be able to access and download the files.

3. Email

Finally, our “last resort” method. Email is a perfectly viable solution to share pictures with clients without losing quality. It’s fast, free, accessible, and you don’t need to worry about compression. Why do we not really recommend this method, then?

Well, for one, many email services have a file size limit, so if you’re trying to share a large collection of images, this method won’t work for you. Another downside to this option is that it doesn’t provide an organized gallery like the other options. Some clients prefer having an organized gallery, as it helps them record what files they have received and when they were sent to them.

Plus, it’s hard to effectively manage client proofing across a large gallery exclusively relying on email.

The bottom line is that email will work for you if you’re sending a couple of photos and don’t expect much back and forth. All other scenarios will probably require a more built-for-purpose option (like an online client gallery).

Best Practices to Retain High-Quality Photos

Choose Your Methods Carefully

Balancing image quality, client preferences, and convenience is key to happy clients. Email works if you send a couple of images, but other solutions are better for larger galleries and more technical photography work.

Opt for methods that don’t compress images. If you must compress images, make sure you use a lossless compression method (like ZIP or TAR) and explain to clients how they can reverse the process to access the original image.

Capture in RAW Format

If you're shooting in digital format, RAW files are the way to go. They're unprocessed and uncompressed, so they retain the maximum amount of information from the camera. That gives you more to work with in the editing process, leading to higher-quality images overall.

You’ll need to choose a method that supports RAW images to do this. Since these files tend to be big (10–50 MB) email is probably out. Luckily, some client gallery tools (like Picflow) support RAW uploads, and platforms like Dropbox and Google Drive make sending files of any size easy.

Balance Camera Settings

This may be a bit obvious as a photographer, but high-quality photos start with ensuring your camera settings are balanced and optimized. This includes everything from the aperture, ISO, shutter speed, white balance, and more. 

Depending on what you’re shooting and the look you’re going for, these elements may differ. Play around with different combinations until you find one that works best for your images. Every camera has quirks, and getting to know your camera specifically will help with quality (even if you’ve been shooting for years).

Edit Carefully

Editing is essential to post-production—it can take photos from good to great (or from great to amazing). But when editing digital images—especially in RAW format—it's important not to overdo it. Too much tweaking can make them look less authentic, so try to stay true to their original colors and composition as much as possible.

It’s relatively easy to edit an unedited image. It’s harder to correct edits to an image that the client ends up disliking. Wait for feedback (and image annotations if you’re using a tool like Picflow), and make sure that the client is completely satisfied before you make any irrevocable changes.

Work Collaboratively

At the end of the day, quality is subjective. Even “imperfections” like blur, pixelation, and distortion can be design assets—although usually when done intentionally. A high-quality photo is one that meets your client’s needs, resonates with the target audience, and reflects your creative vision.

The only way to balance these considerations is with collaboration. That’s why it’s important to choose tools that make collaboration simple.

Picflow’s comment threads, image annotations, flags, and color tags are all simple but effective ways to ensure that everyone is on the same page and can share feedback without confusion or misunderstanding.

Whether it takes several rounds of tweaks or only one, with Picflow’s collaborative tools, you can easily create a photo that exceeds your client’s expectations and meets the needs of any project.

Impress Clients with High-Quality Photos using Picflow

High-quality photos can be the difference between success and failure for a project. 

Thanks to Picflow Galleries, you don’t have to worry about quality or compression. We support RAW uploads, 4K video, and beautifully responsive galleries to ensure your photos look their best—no matter where they’re seen. 

Plus, with Picflow’s robust sharing and collaboration features, you can easily share your images with clients and team members to get the feedback you need for a successful project. Get started for free and see why Picflow should be your go-to tool for sending high-quality photos.