Heard of online photo proofing but not quite sure what it is, or how it works?
If you’re a photographer or someone who likes to take photos for clients or customers, you need a solid way to showcase your work to clients. You also need to think of ways to make it easier for your clients to select or approve the images they want from the shoot.
A great way to do this is by setting up photo proofing on your own website. This way, you make it easy for clients to view and select the images they like and as a result, it helps enhance the client experience and improve the workflow.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what photo proofing is and how it helps your clients view and approve images in a convenient way.
What is photo proofing?
Photo proofing is the process where a client selects photos before the photographer or editor starts doing any work on them and sends back finalized images. It’s a great way to showcase your work to your client and make it easy for them to approve the images they want to have edited.
Once you’re done taking pictures, you can upload all of them in a gallery collection on your website. This way, your client can easily view the images from their shoot and send you back the ones they want to move forward with.
Benefits of online photo proofing
While the in-person or traditional (email) photo proofing methods work great, online photo proofing works even better.
This is because, with traditional photo proofing methods, photographers usually have to send many emails back and forth which makes the workflow prone to errors and difficult to keep track of. On the other hand, online photo proofing takes away the hassle of sending multiple emails manually to your client. You can simply upload all the images onto an online private library and send them to your client, without them having to copy file names and sending emails manually.
With online photo proofing, you spend less time and effort to showcase and proof your images. This means that you don’t have to put in extra time sending emails back and forth with your clients. Instead, you can focus on growing your business.
Online photo proofing is also a great way to improve the client experience on your photography website. This is because it makes it much more convenient for clients to quickly view and approve the images they want to finalize from their shoot.
You not only save time but also increase revenue for your business. Since you’re reducing the time spent in sending, approving, and finalizing the images to be edited for clients, you can cater to more clients and grow your bottom line.
In addition to this, online photo proofing on your own website, instead of an external tool like Dropbox or similar, is a great way to promote and strengthen your brand by using your own logo, your brand’s unique colors, and the design when sending your images to clients.
Best photo proofing plugin for WordPress
There are a few different options available to you when choosing between top-notch photo-proofing plugins for WordPress. Most of them are built as gallery plugins first, and added proofing as one of many features. With picu, we built everything from the ground up to be the best tool you can get to bring photo proofing to WordPress, and nothing else!
Here’s why that matters:
picu offers an all-in-one solution for setting up online photo proofing on your WordPress site, even if you don’t know how to code. It lets you simplify communication between you and your clients by offering an easy way to speed up the photo-sharing and selection process. It also takes out the hassle of going back and forth with your clients over email. And if you know how to code, picu is very developer friendly and there are plenty of ways to extend and modify it with filters and action hooks.
With picu, setting up online photo proofing on your website is very easy. Once you’re done shooting images, upload them to a picu collection and send them to your client. Your client can go through the images, approve the ones they like, and send them back to you quickly. This way, you can start working on the approved images and deliver final images in a timely manner without having to go back and forth over email. In addition to this, you also reduce the chances of any errors in selecting images due to mistakes when entering filenames.
picu offers extensive functionality for showcasing your images better in attractive galleries with the free version. By using picu’s pro modules, you can customize your photography proofing site according to your branding and add extended features to picu.
What else can you do with picu?
Here are a few of picu’s advanced modules that can help you enhance online photo proofing on your WordPress site:
- Brand & Customize module. This module lets you add your own logo, adjust colors, and use Google or Adobe fonts to customize how your picu collections look on the front-end for your clients.
- Download module. picu’s Download module lets your clients directly download multiple or single images from their collections. You can either choose to automatically create a .zip file from the collection or specify an external link.
- Import module. The Import module is a great feature to have especially if you upload huge amounts of images in one go. It lets you upload images to a directory on your server (e. g. via SFTP) and directly import them from there. This increases the performance and is perfect for photographers that cover events like weddings and birthdays and that shoot huge amounts of images.
- Mark & Comment module. Using the Mark & Comment module, you can take client communication to the next level. The module lets you collect detailed feedback from clients on individual images. Clients can comment on images that they want specific edits on in the post-production process and mark certain areas of an image to highlight certain spots that need attention.
- Theft Protection module. If you’re sharing photos on the internet, it’s important to protect them using your brand’s unique watermark. This is where picu’s Theft Protection module comes into play. It lets you add your own logo (or another image) as a watermark on top of your images to make it more difficult for anyone to steal your work.
How to set up online photo proofing in WordPress
Before we jump into setting up online photo proofing in WordPress using picu, let’s talk about why you should use a self-hosted server instead of a SaaS platform for your photography website.
It’s important for your photography website to offer a seamless and lag-free experience for your clients when they’re browsing images on your site.
Using a solution such as picu with your own WordPress site is a far better option as compared to using an external SaaS platform. This way, you have full control over your images and website data and you choose where the photos are stored. Additionally, it’s a more secure and efficient way of online proofing images.
Getting started with picu on your WordPress site is incredibly easy and you can set up online photo proofing within a few clicks.
Here’s what you need to do:
Step #1: Install and activate picu
The easiest way to install the free version of picu, is by using the plugin directory built into WordPress. Navigate to Plugins → Add New from the WordPress admin panel and search for picu in the top right search field.
Click on the Install Now button to install the plugin, and make sure you activate the plugin once it’s installed.
Step #2: Create a new collection
Head on over to picu → New Collection and give your collection a name.
Click on the Upload / Edit Images button and upload all your images directly into the pop-up window.
Once you’re done, click on the Insert Images button to continue.
Step #3: Share the collection with your client
You can choose to either send a direct link to the collection to your client or choose to send them via email.
Once you’re done, make sure to publish or send the collection to your client.
Your clients will be able to view and approve images using an attractive online image gallery.
Once they’re done selecting the images they like, they can enter a message and send them your way for the post-production process.
Conclusion
Online photo proofing is one of the best ways to enhance the client experience on your photography website as well as save resources for your business. Using a robust tool such as picu can help you showcase your work better and eliminate the need to send multiple emails back and forth to your clients.
It lets your clients quickly approve the images they want from their shoot and send them your way within a few clicks. It’s a great way to enhance communication with your clients while also reducing the chance of errors. As a result, it can help you save time that you can use to grow your business.
Looking for an easy way to set up online photo proofing on your photography website? Get picu today!