As a photographer, delivering photos to clients is just as important as capturing them. Whether you’re shooting weddings, portraits, events, or commercial work, your clients expect a professional experience from start to finish—including how they receive their final images.
The challenge? Modern cameras produce massive files. A single RAW file from a professional camera can be 50-100MB. A typical wedding shoot might generate 50GB or more of final deliverables. Traditional methods like email attachments are useless, and many file sharing services either compress your images or make clients jump through hoops to download them.
The Problem with Traditional Photo Delivery
Most photographers have tried various solutions, each with significant drawbacks:
Email: Completely impractical for anything beyond a handful of low-resolution previews. Email services typically limit attachments to 25MB, and even then, large attachments often fail to send or get blocked by the recipient’s email provider.
Cloud Storage Services: While Dropbox, Google Drive, and similar services work, they force clients to create accounts, navigate folders, and deal with sync issues. The experience feels impersonal and technical rather than professional.
WeTransfer: Popular among creatives, but the free version expires links after 7 days and shows ads. The Pro version is expensive for features photographers don’t need.
Gallery Platforms: Services like Pixieset and ShootProof are built for photographers but come with monthly fees, watermarked galleries, and restrictions on file types.
What Photographers Actually Need
After years of shooting everything from intimate elopements to corporate events, professional photographers have identified what matters most in file delivery:
Speed: Clients are excited to see their photos. The faster you can deliver, the better their experience and the more likely they’ll leave glowing reviews and refer friends.
Simplicity: Your clients shouldn’t need to create accounts, install software, or follow complicated instructions. They should click a link and get their photos.
Quality Preservation: Your images should be delivered exactly as you exported them—no compression, no re-encoding, no quality loss.
Professional Presentation: The delivery experience reflects on your brand. It should feel polished and intentional, not like you’re dumping files in a generic folder.
Flexibility: Sometimes you deliver JPGs. Sometimes RAW files. Sometimes both, plus PDFs of prints. Your delivery method should handle any file type without restrictions.
A Better Approach: Link-First File Sharing
Modern file sharing has evolved beyond the upload-then-share model. The link-first approach flips the process: you get a shareable link immediately, then upload files to it as they’re ready.
This matters tremendously for photographers. Imagine this workflow:
- Finish shooting a portrait session
- Create a link while walking back to your car
- Text it to your client immediately: “Your photos will appear here as I finish editing them”
- Edit photos throughout the week
- Export and upload finished images—clients see them appear in real-time
- No “final delivery” announcement needed—they’ve been watching files arrive
This creates anticipation and engagement. Instead of waiting days for a delivery notification, clients can check the link whenever they want. When new photos appear, it feels like opening presents.
Real-World Photography Workflows
Wedding Photographers: Create a link before the wedding day. During the reception, upload a few sneak peek photos. Clients can share the link at their reception or on social media. Over the next few weeks, add edited images as you complete them. The link becomes a living gallery of their wedding.
Portrait Photographers: After a session, create a link and upload proofs. Clients review and select favorites. You upload final high-resolution versions of their selections to the same link. Everything stays organized in one place.
Event Photographers: Cover a corporate event and need to deliver hundreds of photos to multiple stakeholders. Create one link, upload all photos, and share it with everyone who needs access. No confusion about versions or which folder to check.
Product Photographers: Shooting for e-commerce clients who need images fast. Create a link per product or collection. Upload RAW files for client approval, then replace with retouched finals. The link structure matches their catalog structure.
Essential Features for Professional Delivery
When evaluating file sharing tools for photography work, several features separate professional solutions from consumer tools:
Large File Support: Professional cameras produce large files. Your sharing tool must handle RAW files (50-100MB each), high-resolution TIFFs, and large video files without choking.
No Compression: Your images should be delivered byte-for-byte identical to what you uploaded. Automatic compression might save bandwidth, but it destroys the quality you worked hard to achieve.
Password Protection: Some shoots require confidentiality—corporate headshots, private events, or sensitive subjects. Password-protecting links ensures only intended recipients access the files.
Custom Expiration: You might want links to last forever for wedding clients (they’ll want to download photos for anniversaries), but expire quickly for commercial clients with usage-limited licenses.
Collaboration Features: Sometimes clients need to add their own files to a shoot—like logos for composite work or documents for reference. Two-way file sharing simplifies collaboration.
Making the Right Choice
The best file sharing solution for photographers balances simplicity, professionalism, and cost. You need something that works reliably without ongoing fees eating into your profit margins, but that still delivers a polished client experience.
FileGrab was built specifically for this use case. The link-first model means you can share links immediately after a shoot. The free tier offers 100MB of storage—perfect for testing or occasional small deliveries. For working photographers, the Pro plan provides 10GB of storage, 2GB file uploads (handling even the largest RAW files), password protection, and forever links for $10/month.
Unlike gallery platforms that charge based on the number of galleries or images, FileGrab charges for storage. Deliver one massive wedding or a hundred small portrait sessions—the cost stays predictable.
Start Delivering Files Like a Pro
Your photography deserves a professional delivery experience. Stop fighting with email attachments, confusing folder structures, or expensive gallery platforms.
Try FileGrab for your next client delivery. Create your first link in seconds at filegrab.link and see how simple professional file sharing can be. Your clients will notice the difference.