Last Updated: August 15th, 2020

Editor’s Note: While we used Pixieset for several years, we decided to transition to Pic-Time due to a better sales interface and built in Sales assistance tool that have led to sharp increases in our print and album sales. It’s a change that was not made lightly, but one that has been tried and tested for over 12 months since writing this article on Pixieset. We do not currently actively recommend Pixieset to our readers, though it remains a good online gallery platform as far as we understand. To learn more about Pic-Time, please read our review and Pic-Time vs. Pixieset comparison.

If you try Pic-Time, you can use the promo code FORMEDFROMLIGHT to receive 1 bonus month to any upgraded plan.

Early on into our photography business, we decided that delivering images to our clients via an online gallery would be vastly superior to sending out a USB flash drive after each session.

While we do send out flash drives for larger galleries (such as wedding day photo galleries – which can have upwards of 1,000 photos and take up 16GB+ of space!), always the first thing to end up in front of our client’s eyes is the online gallery format. In the simplest terms – an online gallery allows for immediate access to the photos, and can be a way to present the images in a manner that is more concise and beautiful.

Our search for the right online gallery platform was fairly simple. We checked out a number of services including SmugMug, Zenfolio, Shoot Proof, and so on – we ultimately ended up deciding to go with Pixieset as it jived most heavily with what we needed in an online gallery system.

While we are not going to go into a lot of detail comparing Pixieset to other platforms (we will save that for another series of articles), we are going to show you how Pixieset works on the backend for photographer users, and additionally showcase how the gallery ends up looking once it’s in the hands of your clients.

Our goal will be to be as comprehensive as possible so as to provide you with a detailed guide that can help you decide whether or not Pixieset will be the right digital photo gallery platform for you.

Our Guide to Using Pixieset

At it’s most simple form, Pixieset is an online gallery service that allows you to upload photos and send to your clients to review, download, and even purchase as physical prints through an integrated store. It has an easy to use interface that harbors some hidden secrets that can further enhance both your experience as you can toggle on and off certain things (such as security settings), and the experience of your clients who have a elegant representation of their images.

Our specific use case stems from our photography business where we host a large number of wedding, engagement, and portrait galleries throughout the year. We have also provided images to wedding venues and other vendors with more limited access rights, and have even used it as a system to show proofs to a large commercial client we did contracted photography for (this being The Movie Tavern).

As you can see, we have done a whole lot with our galleries, and as a result have much experience getting to know the ins and outs of Pixieset – so can showcase the added value it can have on your photography business.

Overview of Features

Right now we are going to break down Pixieset into it’s most significant parts. We provide this as an outline for what is to come throughout the rest of this article, feel free to skip around to the things that most interest you – or read through everything so you can have the most comprehensive view of what it has to offer you.

• Client galleries (called “Collections”)

  • Logos & Branding

  • Watermark Options

  • Design settings

  • Security settings

• Online Store

  • Create price sheets & select your products

  • Choose your vendor

• Pixieset App

Client Galleries

The “bread and butter” of Pixieset are the client galleries.

The major reason why you will be looking at an online gallery service is for this. All other features are simply additions to this, and the features found on Pixieset and how they are implemented are the reason why we have chosen to go with it. These features are, of course, required to be built on a solid foundation.

Our expectation with any digital gallery is that the content we upload is done so in a manner that is protected, and in an environment that will be stable and easily accessible in the future by both us and our clients. Generally speaking, this is not really an issue for any of the most reputable gallery options out there, including Pixieset as you might expect.

To get started with setting up your first online gallery on Pixieset, you will need an account (plans range from free to 40$ per month when billed annually). By signing up through our link, you get an extra 250MB of storage instantly to your account.

Once you have your account ready to go, you will want to drop into the Settings section really click to upload your logo and other brand imaging if you’d like (as seen in the image below). These items will be presented in different areas of the online gallery, and watermarks will be added when specified to image uploads (often for the purpose of providing proofs).

Once done with the setup, simply click the “New Collection” button to begin adding an actual gallery.

Standard collection settings will have you add photos to a “Highlights” photo set, though you can easily add different sets as you see fit.

For smaller sessions, we normally just keep this as the standard – though for wedding day galleries, which can have a lot of images in them, we usually break the photos down into the main parts of the day. Our sets would look something like this:

• Getting Ready

• Bride & Groom Portraits

• Bridal Party & Family Formal Portraits

• Ceremony

• Reception

Related posts: 135 Wedding Photography Tips for Beginners

You can see this similar breakdown in a more recent wedding gallery we delivered in the image below:

Actually loading the photos into the gallery set(s) is easy enough, though if you have a lot of photos it can take a bit of time (this is likely dependent both on Pixieset’s uploader as well as your internet speed). For very large galleries, we’ll often start loading things before we go to bed to get a jump start on things. Not really an “issue” for us, but something to keep in mind.

Once your images are all uploaded, the customization and flexibility Pixieset has to offer can really be explored in more detail. We’ll break these down in more detail now.

Collection settings

In “Collection Settings,” you have access to some of the more basic but necessary items you will want to control in your online gallery. You can adjust the Collection Name, Event Date, Collection URL, and other elements. If you want to organize your Pixieset galleries, you can add tags like “wedding” or “engagement session” to keep like galleries together when viewed from the home page (which may or may not be made accessible to others, depending on how you want to set it up).

The most significant settings we consistently adjust are: Auto Expiry, Email Registration, and Gallery Assist.

Auto Expiry

While we initially would allow galleries to stay online indefinitely, we found this to not really make sense as even in the highest paid plans, we could still run out of space. Practically speaking, many clients only really are interacting with their online galleries shortly after initial delivery, maybe for having stationary printed if needed for wedding invites or thank you notes, and sometimes leading up to their anniversary.

With small galleries, it’s easy enough for clients to download and have ample storage space – while with huge wedding galleries, the provided flash drives we give provide our clients with a physical medium where all their images will be housed.

While you will want to define your own standards, we have taken the approach of keeping smaller sessions available for 3 months from delivery – and wedding galleries online for 1 year from delivery.

Of course, it goes without saying, if you do decide to expire galleries – you should be sure to have all of your clients galleries backed up on an external hard drive. We normally double and even triple backup our own photos across different HD’s and computers.

Email Registration

As the name implies, Email Registration as an option that can be toggled on/off and can be used to require that guests that visit the gallery page input an email. While we don’t require this ourselves, it can be a useful mechanism to see (potentially anyways – depending on the email address), who is viewing a particular gallery. You might see a familiar email like that of the client themselves, but you may also find friends and family visiting as well – as the client can share their gallery link with anyone they please.

As a more advanced usage, you could also leverage this data to add people to your mailing list. You will want to review Pixieset’s article about collection email addresses, and consider using a mailing list service like MailChimp (which requires a Double Opt-In).

Gallery Assist

Lastly, “Gallery Assist” is another option that can be toggled on/off – though we keep this on at all times. This results in a simple pop up that displays whenever someone goes to view the gallery which walks through the basic functionality.

It gives a brief overview of how to download images, share with friends and family, pick favorites, and that buying prints is an option through this service.

While all components are useful in providing our customers with the best experience once they get their galleries – the mention of being able to buy prints at this (often highly emotional moment in the gallery delivery process) has actually, likely, converted a number of sales for us.

We say this as people who don’t really emphasize physical print or album sales ourselves.

Design

The design options present in Pixieset provide the ability for you to control how your images display in your client galleries. These can be customized for each gallery if you so desire.

You are able to select the cover image – which is the first picture to display to your client when they open their gallery.

In the “Gallery Style” tab, you can control whether or not to emphasize portrait or landscape images, set the background color theme to either white or black (help with contrasts and how the images are perceived depending on the overall color of the images you provide), and select the thumbnail size that suits you.

The design function is really simple, but makes for an effective way to showcase your work in a way that is clean and modern, while allowing for some flexibility to customize.

Privacy

In the world we live in where privacy concerns have been at the forefront of many people’s minds, this is something we hold in high regard when it comes to our online galleries.

Fortunately, with Pixieset, providing online galleries to your clients that are secure is easy to do.

At it’s simplest form, you can include a password requirement (and you set the password). You can also take things further and limit access to only your clients, and give them the ability to mark certain photos or sets of photos as private (so unable to be accessed by anyone else).

When giving a client exclusive access, you can also enable a secondary password that is entered in addition to the Collection password. While you may not feel this is necessary for every gallery type (and it could maybe be seen as a hassle by your client), if you are planning to use Pixieset for boudoir photo galleries – it may be something to seriously consider given the increased want for privacy in these sorts of sets by most clients.

Download

For your clients, the ability to download their images is probably the most important so they can put them to use by ordering prints, sharing with friends & family on social media, and save them to their computers and external hard drives.

Pixieset offers an assortment of options to make sure your clients are getting the files you want them to have when downloading.

In some cases, you may want to disable downloading at all – such as to limit this function when sending a gallery of proofs for your client to select from.

The download size options can also be provided with your choice of 1-3 file sizes:

• Original (Full Resolution)
• High Resolution (3600px)
• Web Size (2048px).

As we often explain to our own clients, you will want the original file size if you want to see all of the details or have an image printed such as on canvases or in an album. Alternatively, if you just want to share on Facebook, you will want the smaller file sizes outputted for web.

Adding another layer of security, you can also add a requirement for a download pin# to be inputted before any photos can be downloaded.

In the Advanced Options section, by enabling “email tracking,” you will be notified every time a gallery or image is downloaded. This is often a useful way to check that a client has in fact received there images, or if they are sharing them through Pixieset to friends and family.

Favorite

Enabling your clients to favorite images, and create favorite image lists, is a simple way to get them interacting with their online photo gallery. As photographers providing these images as an end product, it’s always cool to see the photos they select – sometimes even selecting a large number of photos. It can be really reaffirming on our end that our work is of a high quality.

It is, of course, in the interest of the client as well for when they return to the gallery to have easy access to the images they consider their favorites.

In addition to the client ability to set up favorite lists on their own, you can also create some as well as a means of communication that might be desired after gallery delivery.

For example, one way we use favorite lists is for the purpose of assembling a wedding album for our client. The way this works is simple – click on the “Create Favorite List” icon, and fill in the necessary fields. In our case, we might want a maximum of 30 images to be used in the album, and this is a simple way to restrict the client to have to only select 30 images.

Sharing

Probably the simplest of all of the features on Pixieset, your client can share their images through major social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google +) as well as through direct link via email. This can be done on individual images and full gallery sets.

While it may be obvious, this is an essential way to enable clients to use their images as they want to. There is really no lack of benefit to your business either as they share with others, as this is one of the best parts about clients sharing their photos – other people see them, and want to know who the photographer is and have their photos done, too! 🙂

Store

In our opinion, the store functionality of the Pixieset gallery is what makes it so valuable to us as business owners.

It’s implementation into the design is very non-intrusive – so if your clients don’t feel like buying things through your storefront, they aren’t forced to.

But, there is a serious value added to just have it in there, as sometimes clients will make purchases – and even more often when they share with mom, dad, or an extended family member – those people will be the ones to purchase as gifts. We’ve seen this on a few occasions ourselves, and it is always a welcomed surprise.

The way the Pixieset storefront works is like this:

• You define your price sheet by populating what products you will be offering, and how much you will charge for them. This allows you to clearly see what printing costs will be, and how much profit you would make per sale.

• You can also select what vendor will print your goods. You can read more about this process on Pixieset in their FAQ article – What Are My Fulfillment Options? In short: you can either self-fulfill orders (meaning you collect the payment, and place an order with any print studio you want), or you can have orders fulfilled through Pixieset partners (currently: WHCC, ProDPII, Miller’s, Mpix, and Loxley Colour). In our experience, we have orders fulfilled through WHCC – and haven’t had issues.

• Once all of this is set, your client can order directly through their gallery by clicking on the image and clicking “Buy Image.” It then brings them to the pop-up page (seen in the image above) to select the specific product they want. When complete, they can go to a simple order page (akin to shopping on Amazon or any other online retailer) and check out.

As you can see, it is really a nice feature that compliments the beautiful galleries you are already sharing.

As professional photographers, it is also a way to add some level of control over where clients are printing their photos – as you can validate the good quality of the print labs, and suggest to your clients to stay away from big box stores like CVS or Wal-Mart that often output poor quality prints.

Pixieset Mobile Gallery App

If after reading the phrase “Pixieset app” you were thinking we were just going to talk about a mobile version of Pixieset with all of the same features: you are wrong.

The Pixieset mobile gallery app is, actually, a service you can provide to your client to showcase highlights of your work in a mobile strict space.

As you should expect, the mobile application is optimized for use on phones and other mobile devices like a tablet such as the iPad. It can be customized for each client gallery, and be provided in a simple download link on their phone.

The gallery app consists of many of the same features they would find on their regular online gallery, but with the convenience of it being housed offline (so they don’t need a wi-fi or data network to access).

Conclusion

Pixieset has become a core staple of our business, and it’s platform is in many ways very much reflective of our end product.

When viewed like this, you can see how having the right online gallery delivery platform is so essential as a photographer.

In the past few years of our use of Pixieset, we have had no issues or setbacks, and in fact during meetings with prospective clients – it is something we like to showoff, and we consistently get positive feedback about how the galleries look and are easy to use.

We hope you’ve found our in depth look at Pixieset to be valuable to your understanding of what this service provides. In our opinion formed through years of use, it really is the best online gallery for photographers & their clients.

If you have any questions about Pixieset, please ask away in our comment section below!

If you are wanting to sign up for Pixieset to start with a free account or move up to a paid account for additional storage space, consider using our link. Thanks!! 🙂

Bonus Tip

Any photographer who would benefit from the power of a great online gallery to showcase their client photos would also LOVE Honeybook – a all-in-one booking platform allows you to easily send contracts and invoices to your clients.

If you’re still booking clients with pen-and-paper, or are using some other program that just isn’t cutting it, then I suggest you read our Honeybook review and give it a try for free.