Client galleries: view, favourite and download

This page is for when a client asks “how do I get my photos” and you want to answer without guessing. It walks through the gallery as your client sees it: how they view it, how favourites work, the three ways they can download, and the protections that apply to every download. By the end you’ll know what to tell them, and how to set up downloads so they already work.

What your client opens

A Tellisto gallery is a web page. There’s no app to install and no account to make. Your client taps the link you sent, and the photos open on whatever device they’re holding. Most clients open it on a phone, on the couch, the night the gallery arrives, so the gallery is designed for phones first. Photos fill the screen. On a gallery with several sets, a strip stays pinned along the top so they can jump between sets without scrolling back up. On a big monitor the same gallery fills the width, up to about five columns, so it doesn’t look like a stretched phone screen. Your studio’s branding runs through the whole page. As far as your client can tell, you built the page yourself.

Only your client sees their picks

On a final delivery gallery, your client taps a photo to mark it as one they want. A bar counts their picks as they go. Before anything saves, they see everything they’ve picked and can drop any they’ve changed their mind about. That list stays in their own browser. You’re never notified, and you never see it. It helps them cut a big gallery down to the few photos that matter to them, and it stays private.

Don’t confuse this with proofing. On a delivery gallery, picking means “these are the ones I want”. On a proofing gallery the symbol is a heart and it works the other way: it sends your client’s picks and notes back to you so you can act on them. Run a proofing round covers that stage. The two only appear together on a delivery gallery that still has an open formal selection. That’s rare, and we’re fixing it.

Three ways to download

When you allow downloads on a gallery, your client can download in three ways:

1. The whole gallery as a single ZIP, for the client who wants everything kept. If you set one download size in the gallery’s settings, it arrives at that size without asking them to choose.
2. Any single photo on its own, for the one frame they want to send to a grandparent tonight. They choose the size: Full resolution, Large, Web & social or Small. Tellisto only offers sizes smaller than the original, so a small photo may just show Full resolution.
3. Just the ones they pick, marked as they browse and saved together in one go.

You allow or block downloads gallery by gallery, so you decide whether a job is a view-only preview or a full delivery. On a proofing gallery, downloads stay locked until you unlock them. That way a client chooses their photos before anyone can take the files. Every photo a client receives is a JPEG, so it opens anywhere without special software.

Big galleries don’t make anyone wait

A full-wedding ZIP can be large, and building it takes a while. Instead of making your client watch a spinner, Tellisto builds the file in the background and emails them the link as soon as it’s ready. So if a client asks why they got an email with a download link, that’s the reason. Nothing failed, and they didn’t have to keep the tab open.

What you can see from your side

The gallery’s own page shows whether your client has viewed it and whether they’ve downloaded it. That’s enough to confirm the delivery arrived, or to spot a gallery that’s sat unopened for a week and needs a reminder. It doesn’t show their private favourites. For help with the message that gets a gallery opened in the first place, see what to write when you send a gallery.

Protections that are on by default

Two things happen to every photo your client downloads, without anyone switching them on.

Tellisto strips location metadata from every photo your client downloads. A back-garden newborn shoot won’t carry a home address into a family group chat, because the address isn’t in the file.

If you want to be paid before you deliver, turn on Sell first, deliver after in the gallery’s settings. Your client can browse the proofs, which carry your watermark by default, but downloads stay locked. Unlock them once you’re paid, and the clean files release straight away.

If the work is sensitive and you’d rather the gallery show nothing at all until it’s unlocked, that’s a separate setting: see private galleries. Both download protections are on from the start, with nothing to set up. If a job needs the location data kept, you can switch off metadata stripping for that gallery in its settings.