How do You get photos to your clients?

[Tbini87]

hey guys, my wife and i have been doing some shoots for friends babies and kids. we edit the photos then throw them on a cd and give the cd to the family. this seems a bit cheesy since the photos just go in any order, and the original photo shows up along with the edited one. i was wondering what you guys do to get the photos to your clients. does better software like photoshop help do that? we are just using iphoto that comes stock on a macbook, but should be upgrading to better software like aperture, or elements soon. any tips, thoughts, or advice is appreciated!

 

[David Dvir]

You should be using Aperture 3.0. It's really awesome. Using it you can export files that are edited, or RAWs or both. Whatever you'd like. You can choose the order and the name of the files and you can really customize everything when exporting.

That's the useless part though. The really awesome stuff is the actual editing. It's super fast and very very good. You have massive choices when it comes to your edits. It's a bit overwhelming at first compared to iPhoto, but much much better. And ridiculously cheap considering I use it at the studio, and so does every one of my employees.

That aside, we don't give DVD's out. We nearly 100% use FTP file transfers. But there's nothing wrong with DVDs

 

[Overread]

I'm wondering why you aren't organising the photos before you put them on the disk - you don't need a program to sort files into different folders (heck you could just save the edited versions into a separate "keeps" file and just use the content of that file for the disk).

As for ordering numerical would be the most simplistic - building up from there you could specifically label each photo you edit - 1 2 3 etc- to give some order to the presentation.

 

[mohall]

I use Photo Reflect-www.monicahallphotography.photoreflect.com
and it is linked to my site www.monicahallphotography.com, which I just started.

 

[Tbini87]

You should be using Aperture 3.0. It's really awesome. Using it you can export files that are edited, or RAWs or both. Whatever you'd like. You can choose the order and the name of the files and you can really customize everything when exporting.

That's the useless part though. The really awesome stuff is the actual editing. It's super fast and very very good. You have massive choices when it comes to your edits. It's a bit overwhelming at first compared to iPhoto, but much much better. And ridiculously cheap considering I use it at the studio, and so does every one of my employees.

That aside, we don't give DVD's out. We nearly 100% use FTP file transfers. But there's nothing wrong with DVDs

definitely looking forward to upgrading to better editing software!

What is an FTP file transfer? you just transfer the pics over the internet and they can download them or something? do you have to pay to do that?

 

[Tbini87]

I'm wondering why you aren't organising the photos before you put them on the disk - you don't need a program to sort files into different folders (heck you could just save the edited versions into a separate "keeps" file and just use the content of that file for the disk).

As for ordering numerical would be the most simplistic - building up from there you could specifically label each photo you edit - 1 2 3 etc- to give some order to the presentation.

we edit and organize them. we keep them in seperate "event" folders i think. but when we send them to DVD it puts both edited and original pics on. is that just a simple fix? my wife does it and wanted me to ask if there is a better way to do it... since she thinks it is a bit tedious and unprofessional looking. Do you use DVDs?

 

[Big Mike]

Why send the clients the unedited photos? Give them the 'keepers' only and be done with it.

As for ways to make it a better 'product'....you could make a slideshow to play on their computer or DVD player.
You could spruce up the packaging as well. I used to use printed labels that you stick to the disc, but that is a bit cheesy IMO. There are disc that you can print directly onto, if you have a printer with a disc tray. What I do now, is use a 'Lightscribe' burner which burns an image right onto the surface of the disc (special discs). I looks much more professional but it does take a long time.
I also have different cases to put the discs into. Simple Jewel cases or DVD cases (I make a custom insert), and I have leather wrapped cases (which can be hot stamped with text) for weddings etc.

 

[Tbini87]

my wife has been the one to send out the pics on CD, and she mentioned that it automatically put the originals on there as well. Sounds like this is simply operator error and an easy fix. I will look into it next time she goes to burn a CD of images. I also thought that printing off labels for the CDs would be a bit cheezy but might be better than nothing.

 

[David Dvir]

You should be using Aperture 3.0. It's really awesome. Using it you can export files that are edited, or RAWs or both. Whatever you'd like. You can choose the order and the name of the files and you can really customize everything when exporting.

That's the useless part though. The really awesome stuff is the actual editing. It's super fast and very very good. You have massive choices when it comes to your edits. It's a bit overwhelming at first compared to iPhoto, but much much better. And ridiculously cheap considering I use it at the studio, and so does every one of my employees.

That aside, we don't give DVD's out. We nearly 100% use FTP file transfers. But there's nothing wrong with DVDs

definitely looking forward to upgrading to better editing software!

What is an FTP file transfer? you just transfer the pics over the internet and they can download them or something? do you have to pay to do that?

Well, we host our own website. Websites are all stored online somewhere. If your host allows you unlimited storage, as ours does, you can have your website, along with whatever files you'd like on there. For instance, we store a lot of our clients images online, give them a link or FTP access with a username or keyword, and then they can access the files whenever they want, also they'll stay up forever. This is how we prefer to operate.

Here's an example for one of our clients, The Institute for Quantum Computing - 2D Photography Inc. | IQC Image Downloads

Hope that helps. Oh and in this case, they don't need an FTP client to download the images, it's a simple file that's on our FTP and once they enter the username and password, they get the joy of a 4GB download worth of images

 

[Tbini87]

You should be using Aperture 3.0. It's really awesome. Using it you can export files that are edited, or RAWs or both. Whatever you'd like. You can choose the order and the name of the files and you can really customize everything when exporting.

That's the useless part though. The really awesome stuff is the actual editing. It's super fast and very very good. You have massive choices when it comes to your edits. It's a bit overwhelming at first compared to iPhoto, but much much better. And ridiculously cheap considering I use it at the studio, and so does every one of my employees.

That aside, we don't give DVD's out. We nearly 100% use FTP file transfers. But there's nothing wrong with DVDs

definitely looking forward to upgrading to better editing software!

What is an FTP file transfer? you just transfer the pics over the internet and they can download them or something? do you have to pay to do that?

Well, we host our own website. Websites are all stored online somewhere. If your host allows you unlimited storage, as ours does, you can have your website, along with whatever files you'd like on there. For instance, we store a lot of our clients images online, give them a link or FTP access with a username or keyword, and then they can access the files whenever they want, also they'll stay up forever. This is how we prefer to operate.

Here's an example for one of our clients, The Institute for Quantum Computing - 2D Photography Inc. | IQC Image Downloads

Hope that helps. Oh and in this case, they don't need an FTP client to download the images, it's a simple file that's on our FTP and once they enter the username and password, they get the joy of a 4GB download worth of images

that sounds like an awesome system. i don't know anything about technology or websites so i think we will be stuck with CDs for a while lol.

 

[ironsidephoto]

Or Lightroom 3.0... my preference