Five decisions before you send the gallery link

Checked against CullTone on 18 Oct 2026.

The gallery is the first time a couple see the wedding you spent a week on, and the link never stays with the couple for long. By Sunday lunch it's in the family group. Five decisions shape how it lands: what goes in, whether they can download yet, how they tell you what they love, how long it stays up, and who can open it. All five are easier before you press send.

CullTone doesn't send gallery emails yet, so the welcome note is yours to write. Put four things in it: how many photos there are, the date the gallery closes, whether downloads are on, and what you'd like them to do with favourites and redo requests. Keep it short. A couple reading it on a phone at work will read three lines.

The selection comes first

Every photo in a gallery is one the couple might print large, put in an album or post with your name under it. A near-duplicate you kept "just in case" is one they might pick over the better frame. Do the last trim here: go through the set as the couple's least patient relative would, and take out the second version of anything.

In CullTone, a new gallery takes the photos you approved in the Review step unless you choose a set by hand. That's on purpose. A photo that hasn't been checked for clipped highlights and skin colour shifts shouldn't reach a client by default.

Let them answer inside the gallery

A gallery can be where the couple tell you what they want, which saves a round of emails full of screenshots and file numbers.

In a CullTone gallery a client can favourite a photo, approve it, ask for a redo with a note, and leave a comment. You see the counts on the gallery and the notes against each photo. How we'd use them:

• Favourites for album and print picks. Ask for a number ("choose your 40 favourites for the album") or you'll get six, or six hundred.
• Redo for one fix on one photo: a crop, an exit sign gone, warmer skin. The note sits on the photo, so there's no guessing which DSC number they meant.
• Approve as a sign-off, when you've agreed a proofing round before final delivery.
• Comments for everything else, which in practice means "who is this?" and "can you send this one to my aunt?"

Say in the welcome note which of these you'll act on. Couples assume a redo is free unless told otherwise, and a gallery full of redo notes you didn't expect is a slow week.

Downloads: now, later or never

Downloads in a CullTone gallery are one switch: when it's on, the couple can save single photos or a ZIP of the whole set. Being able to flip it later is the useful part. A common pattern is to publish a viewing gallery as soon as the edit is done, keep downloads off while the final invoice is open or the album picks are being made, and switch them on once that's settled.

Think about the ZIP from the couple's side. A few hundred full-size JPEGs run to gigabytes, and zipping them barely shrinks them. On a phone, most people save their favourites one by one. On a laptop the ZIP is less work, if the connection holds.

How long should a gallery stay up?

A gallery should have an end date, and the couple should know it on day one. An open-ended gallery quietly makes you the family archive, paying to store a wedding for years for people who downloaded it in the first week, and it lets them down the day you change providers.

CullTone galleries close six months after you make them unless you pick another date, and you can extend one at any time. Thirty days after a gallery closes, its copies of the photos are deleted to free your storage; the edited photos stay in your project, so you can build a new gallery when a client comes back. Put the date in the welcome note and in your contract, and ask the couple to download before it. There are no reminder emails yet, so a nudge a month before the end goes in your own calendar for now.

The link is the key

A CullTone gallery needs no client account. Anyone with the link can open it, unless you add a PIN of 4 to 8 digits, which the client types once on each browser. The page asks search engines not to list it, but if the couple post the link in the family group, the family can see it, which is usually exactly what they want. When it isn't (a private event, a public figure, photos of children), revoke the link and make a new gallery for a smaller audience. Revoking stops the old link at once.

If you changed a photo with Retouch, by removing something or rebuilding part of the frame, the gallery marks it as AI-edited and the file says so too. The guide to telling clients what you changed covers what to say.

Two gaps, so they don't surprise you: there's no watermark option and no print shop. If either matters to your business, you'll need another service alongside for now.

For the buttons themselves, step by step with screenshots, see delivering a client gallery in the help centre.