Client galleries for professional photographer

[OwennewO]

Hello there, my name is Owen and I am a professional photographer. I am also an avid homelabber, so naturally I thought, "Can I self host my own photography website and client galleries?" Currently I am using Pixieset, but at $600 a year, I am looking for something more affordable!

I have some questions about features;

Currently my workflow for delivering sports photos, is I put all the edited photos in a Pixieset gallery. Then, inside the gallery, I have a set (somewhat like a sub-gallery or sub-album) for each athlete. All of those photos have a watermark of my logo on top, so that people can't steal them.

For an athlete or parent to buy the photos, they have to favorite each one they want to buy with a little heart button. This creates a favorites list, that they enter their email into. Then once they have picked all their photos, they use the 'send to photographer' feature that sends me an email. Then after they pay me, I go into Pixiset, select their favorites list, and use a feature called 'send via email' that sends a download link to the email they entered when they created a favorites list, and the downloaded files have no watermark.

My workflow for portraits is similar. I import all the un-edited photos I took during the session in one Pixieset gallery. Then my client uses the favorites list feature to select what ones they want to buy, so I can edit them. Once I have edited the ones they chose, I create a new Pixieset gallery with the edited files in them, with no watermark, and I turn on the download feature so my client can download the final photos they bought.

I am wondering if Chevereto has the features similar to those Pixieset has, mostly the favorites list, sets/sub-galleries/sub-albums, and an easy way to send files via email.

Also, once I apply the watermark that you get with Chevereto Pro, is that configurable for each gallery/album? Because I might want some galleries/albums with the watermark and then some without.

Also, I got chevereto free running on my server, but I get an error when trying to change the favicon. Trying to modify restricted setting(s): favicon_image

And, I have it exposed via a Cloudflare tunnel, but from my public url, gallery.example.com, I cannot login to my admin account. I can login just fine on the local IP address though.

Thank you!

- Owen

 

[Rodolfo]

Hello Owen,

Thanks for sharing your use case, it helps a lot to understand where we should focus.

Chevereto already supports "likes", which function the same as "favorites" so that workflow should fit. Chevereto doesn’t currently support per-album watermark settings, to support that workflow we need to store the original image and keep it "as-is" to be able to deliver the purchase without watermark. I've created a RFC for this suggestion as I think it will add value to Chevereto and it is very easy to add it.

We also need to add collections to convert those likes into an album-like folder.

We can't fully replicate your workflow yet, but what about this: Describe your ideal dream workflow, without the boundaries of how the existing systems works now. I'm asking you about this because we can build anything, you are talking directly with the creator of the system and I'm very interested in beating Pixieset.

 

[OwennewO]

Thanks Rodolfo, I gave a thumbs up to both of those RFCs, the voting feature doesn't seem to work for me.

If Chevereto already supports "likes", and if better watermark settings are coming soon, I think it could be perfect for me. Most of my clients pay me via cash or Venmo, so I don't need payment built into Chevereto.

The only problem is with sending my clients the photos once they have "liked" the ones they want to buy, and have given me payment. I need the ability to easily create a new, private album (maybe just hidden from chevereto homepage, or even password protected) from what photos my client "liked", with an easy way for the client to download all the photos in this album.

 

[OwennewO]

I do really think, with these updates and maybe a few more added features, Chevereto could be a serious competitor to Smugmug, Pixieset, and the like. Especially once you get Chevereto Cloud up and running. Thank you Rodolfo!

 

[Rodolfo]

@OwennewO Voting here is restricted to clients as we strongly believe in that customers have the right to drive the wheel. But in the case of the watermark feature you shouldn't worry, it is so fundamental that it will happen anyway and relatively soon.

 

[OwennewO]

Hello Rodolfo, I have been messing around more with Chevereto and think it will be perfect for me with a few updates. I have submitted a few RFCs, (https://chevereto.com/community/threads/add-to-album-button-for-user-liked-photos.15950/, https://chevereto.com/community/threads/per-album-download-settings.15951/) and I have made a diagram to visually communicate what I want to achieve.

I have found that tags inside an album will work perfectly for my use case, instead of sub-albums. But I just need enhanced watermarks, per-album download settings, and a solution (https://chevereto.com/community/threads/favorite-collections.15943/, or https://chevereto.com/community/threads/add-to-album-button-for-user-liked-photos.15950/) for user favorites.

Here is my diagram:

I hope this helps you understand my dream workflow, and better understand my RFCs.

Thanks again.