Proofing

Proofing is a gallery with a job: choose twenty for the album.

It is the difference between a gallery you deliver and a gallery you are waiting on, and Meridian Photographers treats them as two different things so you always know which one you are looking at.

Turning a gallery into a proofing set

1. Open the gallery from Galleries → Galleries.
2. In the What this gallery is for panel, set This gallery is to **A

rough set, to choose from. (The other choice, Finished work, to keep**, is a normal delivered gallery.)

1. Under How many their package includes, type the number of picks — twenty,

forty, whatever the package says. Leave it at 0 if there is no set number.

1. Press Save.
2. Upload the photographs and press Deliver to client as usual.

What the client sees

A proofing gallery behaves differently:

• It says what it is for. A note at the top asks them to choose their favourites, explains these are rough frames rather than the finished photographs, and says how many their package includes.
• It counts as they go — twelve chosen so far — so they know where they are without keeping a tally.
• There is no basket. A proofing gallery is not a sales page, and asking somebody to choose twenty favourites while offering to sell them a frame is asking two things at once.
• Downloading is off, whatever the gallery's own download setting says. These are rough frames; a client who downloads unedited work has something you would never have sent them.
• There is a Send these through button, so they can tell you they are finished.

They choose by tapping the heart, and can leave a note against any photograph, which is where can you take the exit sign out of this one ends up instead of in an email.

Both halves of a couple

Picks are gathered across everybody looking, not per person.

Each person choosing has their own list, and the gallery's screen shows you all of them together — the frame he liked and she did not is still a frame somebody asked for — with the ones most people picked at the top.

That is usually the conversation you want to have: *you have both chosen these nine, so those are certain.*

Sending their choices through

The Send these through button is the whole point of the feature. Without it you are guessing — either editing while somebody is still choosing, or waiting a fortnight on a client who finished on the first evening.

• The button only appears once they have chosen at least one photograph.
• Choosing more than you asked for is allowed. The gallery's screen tells you plainly how many over the package they are. A client who wants two more than the package is a conversation about money, not an error message.
• Once sent, their choices are locked, and you are emailed Choices are in with how many were chosen.

Getting the list out

On the gallery's screen, Their favourites lists exactly what was picked, with notes and how many people picked each one, and Copy file names puts the list on your clipboard ready to paste into Lightroom's filter (Library, then Text › Filename › Contains).

That is the step that saves the half hour, and it is the reason to do this here rather than over email.

Changing their mind

If they ask, press Let them choose again in the **What this gallery is for** panel, and they can change their picks and send them through again.

What you cannot do is change the stage after they have handed their choices in. You are asked to make a new gallery instead — because changing the rules underneath somebody is how a client's selections quietly stop counting, and neither of you would notice until the album arrived wrong.

When the edit is done

Deliver the finished photographs in a new gallery set to **Finished work, to keep**. Start another like this copies the look of the proofing gallery, but remember to set the new one back to **Finished work, to keep**.