Proofs

[texasartgirl]

What do you do to let your clients look at proofs? Do you have actual photos - like 4x6 of each picture, an online gallery, etc?

Also, if you have an online gallery, do you have it through your website or what? I just uploaded a bunch of proofs to photobucket and then reduced them to not be huge once they were up there. It is so time consuming and tedious though.

Have you ever considered just selling the rights to the photos and letting people order them where ever instead of through you?

[Ads]

[Alison]

I have an online album through more photos. They order directly through there and the order is e-mailed to me. I used to do them on my personal website, but it did get very time consuming. This way I can accept credit cards through the site and I just add on a charge for shipping.

I use a program to convert from Tiff to Jpeg and then the morephotos software resizes them all for me, it's a lot easier.

I do have some clients that want the rights to the photos and we charged her $250 on top of a package that she bought from us.

[raider]

I let the client look at the free online placement then get directly with me to order the reprints to avoid the chunk the site takes. The site is more for family abroad. For weddings I charge $50 to add 4x6s of 100 photos.
Brent

[LizM]

I include 4x6 proofs in my sitting fee pricing. I put them in a small album from the local dollar store (amazing stuff for only a buck). I like to include an 8x10 also (although I don't tell them they get it ahead of time - its a nice surprise for them that puts them in a good frame of mind).

Also, my standard deal is that they pay up front but when they get the proofs they have 24 hrs to return them for a refund if they don't like any of them.

Another option I like for proofs is to use a photo album program I have to put two shots per page and slip them in a portfolio.

[rangefinder]

I shoot film and get a picture CD. All my proofing is done in an electronic album. I set the security feature to make the CD cease to function after 30 days. The images on the CD are lo-res and another security feature prevents the saving or printing of those images.

I will provide, at an additional charge, hard copy 4x6's.

[Marsha]

So far i've been having clients come to my office to view them on screen, or i'll give them a cd of low res. images. But i'm working on an online gallery in my website. We'll see how it goes.

[CrazyAva]

I use an online site for them to view and then have them contact me to order due to the sites rediculous chunk that they charge. It saves me both time and webspace since it's free and I can just load them up full res to the site and they put a watermark on it for me so no one will steal the photos. I like it for now.

[johnlo]

After the portrait session is completed, I print a contact sheets of all the image photographed during that session from my inkjet printer. they look at what they like and if they need to see the images from the laptop, i do show it to them. so far it has worked very well.

[Christie Photo]

I'm and "old school" kinda guy... most of my customers still expect paper proofs. For portait sessions, we display 8 4x5 previews in a folio and place the rest in an envelope. 9 out of 10 times, I end up selling the folio.

Have fun!

-Pete