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Getting started with client galleries
From booking to delivery in four steps: make the gallery, add photos, send it, and watch favorites and downloads come in. Everything here works on the free plan.
1. Create the gallery
Four ways, pick whichever fits the moment:
- From a booking — in the ShootCal app, every client's page has a Create Gallery button, and the Mac app's new-event form has a Create Client Gallery toggle. The gallery arrives named after the client, linked to them, and dated to the session.
- Automatically — turn on Auto-create a gallery for each new ShootCal client in galleries Settings and every new client you book gets an empty draft waiting.
- In the galleries admin — the New client gallery button; the client picker searches your ShootCal clients too and fills their email.
- From Lightroom — publish a collection; if its name matches an existing gallery the photos land there. See the plugin guide.
New galleries start unlisted — invisible until you share the link. Password protection (paid plans) and a public portfolio listing are per-gallery choices.
2. Add photos
Drag JPEGs into the gallery page, or publish from Lightroom. The photo order is yours: Custom / Lightroom order (drag to reorder, or your collection's order), date taken, or filename — the dropdown sits right on the gallery's manage page and applies to the client gallery, your grid, and downloads alike.
3. Send it
Send & Share emails the gallery to your client: pick a template (including one that includes a print credit code), personalize, and send — a test-to-yourself button lets you preview the real thing. Delivery emails can include a full-resolution download link; download links stay live for 7 days, after which clients just request a fresh one from the gallery.
4. Favorites, downloads, and what's happening
Clients heart photos and send you their selections — no account needed, just their email. Before sending, the Your selections page shows each picked photo full-size with room for a note per photo ("touch up my hair in this one," "this is the print for grandma") plus an overall message. Notes and picks can be saved for later — clients can close the gallery, come back another day, and everything is still there waiting to be sent. Their notes arrive in the selection email alongside the photo list.
The gallery's manage page shows it all at a glance: views, download requests, favorites (with a one-click Copy Lightroom list — paste it into Lightroom's Library filter to select exactly the photos they picked), and hearts that haven't been sent yet.
Your studio page
Alongside individual galleries you get a studio page — your portfolio, at galleries.shootcal.com/your-name (or your own domain). It lists only the galleries you've chosen to feature, so client work stays private unless you deliberately put it there.
Under Settings → Who can find your studio page you decide how visible it is:
- Public (the default) — anyone can visit and search engines can list it. Worth leaving on: it's a free way for new clients to find your work.
- Hidden from search — the page still works for anyone you send the link to, but search engines are told not to list it. Free on every plan.
- Password protected (paid plans) — visitors enter a password first. Signed in as the owner, you always get straight through.
Whichever you pick, individual galleries are unaffected. An unlisted gallery stays unlisted and a password-protected gallery stays protected, regardless of this setting.