The Basics: Your photo gallery is hosted on a site called Pic-Time, which allows you to DOWNLOAD your images as well as CREATE print products through my personally recommended printing companies. Below you’ll find a quick guide to using your gallery, setting up permissions for guests who visit your album, and instructions on how to create prints.
Backup everything (at least 2x)! Your gallery will remain active on this album page for at least ONE YEAR. In practice, I’ve NEVER deleted a gallery from Pic-Time – But if there comes a time where I migrate to a new hosting site, and your gallery will be taken down, you’ll get a series of warning emails reminding you to make additional backups.
I personally use a cloud storage company called Backblaze to backup my own computer and hard drives (because it auto-backs-up every night and I handle too many important photos to take risks), but a lot of my clients will simply use Google Drive.
You might wonder – If in TEN YEARS I realize I have lost my wedding photos, can you do anything to help? In short, “maybe, but not for sure.” Contractually, I will have backups of your images for at least a year. After that, it’s technically on you. HOWEVER, since I deal primarily with wedding photos, my backups are immaculately redundant. If you do lose your wedding images, please contact me ASAP and I will do my very best to get them back for you.
One gallery; two different views. Depending on if you versus “a guest” is viewing the gallery, they will see different images and permissions. In my “your gallery is ready” email, there was a link at the bottom that goes to your gallery. DO NOT SHARE THIS LINK!!! This link tells the gallery that YOU ARE THE OWNER. This specific link gives you special permissions to download and print your images and hide images from public view (see more about hiding images under “privacy settings” in the next section).
If you want to share your gallery with anyone else, navigate into your gallery and click the “share button” (the curved arrow at the top) and send the link indicated there. Guests that access the gallery using this link will only be able to see the images you’ve chosen to leave public and will have limited download privileges.
What you share is up to you! I’ve already taken the liberty of hiding any images I personally think that you might not want made public – such as if you were getting ready and your underwear made a surprise appearance. (You can still see these images when you use your special link that designated you as the owner of the gallery, but your guests will NOT.) When you enter the gallery with your special link, you can choose to hide any additional images you do not want gallery visitors to see by clicking the “eyeball icon” on the image.
Again, only share your gallery using the “share gallery” icon, NOT by sharing your personal link.
A little secret: I DON’T MAKE MONEY ON PRINTS and all products in your shop are AT COST to me! Since your package already comes with all the high-res downloads, there is nothing keeping you from doing your own research and creating your prints or albums through any company you find using these downloads. The prices you see for products in your gallery are the prices I pay to the printing companies I use to print. Which all goes to say…
I highly reccommend that you PRINT THROUGH YOUR GALLERY! I’ve already done my own research on what printing companies hit the sweet spot between QUALITY and COST, and it’s those companies that create the products you see in your shop. But if you do go elsewhere…please please don’t print your precious wedding photos using a random printing company and especially not the discount online ones…trust me now on this so you don’t end up having to print again.
Can’t find what you want in your gallery’s print shop? First step: e-mail me! Usually I can find a print shop and start to offer that product. And if I can’t add it myself, you can always use your high-res downloads and create it yourself!
You can create an album right through your gallery. If you click into the store from your gallery, you will see the option to order an album. You can work right inside the application to organize and design your custom album exactly as you’d like.
Not one for DIY? I’d love to help you out! Let me know if you’re interested in having ME design your album alongside you!