Almost every revision round I have ever done traces back to one of two things: I could not tell what the photographer wanted, or I could not see it in the file. Both are fixed in the five minutes before you send.
In short
- RAW if you have it, full-size JPEG if you do not — never web-size
- Send two or three of your own finished images, once
- Say what to leave alone, not just what to fix
- Any transfer service is fine; a link that expires in three days is not
- Cull first — nobody should be paying to edit frames you will not deliver
File format
RAW gives the most room, especially when a nursery window has thrown a colour cast across half the frame. If you have already done your colour pass in Lightroom, export full-size JPEGs at quality 10–12 or send the RAW plus your XMP. What does not work is a 2000px web export: there is nothing to work with, and the result will not print.
If you shoot tethered and edit in a catalogue, exporting a folder of full-size JPEGs is completely fine. Nobody needs your catalogue.
The style reference nobody sends
Send two or three images you edited yourself and are happy with. Not a Pinterest board — your own work. It is the single highest-value thing in this list, and it only has to happen once. After that I match you, and the notes get shorter every month.
What to write
Three lines is usually enough. What to fix ("flaking on wrists and back of neck"), what to leave ("the birthmark on her shoulder stays — mum asked"), and anything about output ("all vertical, JPEG, nothing cropped"). If one image needs a composite, say which frames belong together.
The "leave alone" line is the one people forget, and it is the one that prevents the painful revision — a retoucher cannot know that a mark on a shoulder is the thing the family wanted kept.
Transfer
WeTransfer, Dropbox, Google Drive, pCloud — all fine, use what you already have. The only real requirements are that the link survives longer than a couple of days and that it points at full-size files. If your gallery is 40GB of RAW, a shared folder beats a transfer link.
Cull before you send
Sending 60 frames to have 25 delivered means paying for 35 you will never use. Cull to what the client will actually see, plus the composite source frames and the empty plates — those are not extra images, they are parts of one.
FAQ
No. Full-size exports or RAWs are enough. If you have a preset you always use, send one edited image and I will match it.
Files are used for the work and nothing else — no portfolio use without your permission, no AI training, deleted on request and always within 90 days.
Any way you like, as long as it is obvious which frames belong together. A folder per composite is the easiest thing for both of us.
Yes, and most regulars do. Galleries are queued in the order they arrive unless you tell me one is urgent.
Deividas Kvederys — photographer and retoucher based in Lithuania, EU. 450+ weddings and 1,500+ sessions of my own before I started editing for other photographers, and I still edit every image myself. Newborn retouching · All genres and pricing