Photo Gallery With Client Favorites and Notes: 2026 Guide

The selects came back this morning as a voice memo: "we love the one where the chef is laughing, the two terrace shots, and that close-up of the plates, you know the one." Somewhere in the 600-photo gallery you delivered, four photos are hiding, and it is now your job to guess which ones.

What client favorites and notes replace

Client favorites and notes move the selects round out of your inbox and onto the photos themselves. Without them, feedback arrives in three broken formats:

• The filename list. "We want DSC_0481, DSC_0512 and DSC_0567." It breaks the moment anyone renames or re-saves a file.
• The screenshot roll. Cropped phone screenshots of your own photos, texted back at a fraction of the resolution.
• The description. "The one where everyone is laughing." Now you are the search engine.

A heart replaces all three with a mark on the photo, and a note pins "use this for the cover" exactly where it belongs.

The free ways to collect client favorites

Google Photos albums and Dropbox file comments collect reactions for free, and both suit small rounds.

• Google Photos shared albums. People can like and comment, and Google shows each person's profile photo or initial beside their reactions. Per Google's shared album help, "If you turn commenting off, people won't be able to like your photos." Google describes likes in the activity view and on the Updates page, not a filtered view of only the liked photos.
• Dropbox file comments. Dropbox's help center says "anyone who has access to a Dropbox file can leave a comment and view other comments, unless commenting is turned off." On an image you can drag a box around an area or comment on an exact point.

Neither Google Drive nor Dropbox keeps a shared favorites list, so a 40-photo selects round scatters across files.

For small hand-picked sets, sharing specific photos with clients covers the free routes in depth.

How proofing galleries handle client selects

Proofing galleries such as ShootProof and Pic-Time built the favorites round for shoot-by-shoot delivery, and they connect it to Lightroom.

• ShootProof. Favorites are listed per gallery visitor, in a Favorites column beside each client's email address, per ShootProof's favorites guide. With Favorites Notification, a client clicks Send Favorites, can add a note, and you get a dashboard notification plus an email. A Linked Contact can also apply labels you define.
• Pic-Time. The Workflow tab shows each user's favorites list, per Pic-Time's help center. Pic-Time 2.0 selection requests let clients "select, review, and discuss the images directly in the gallery in a live collaborative workspace."
• Pixieset and CloudSpot. Also proofing galleries; check their current pages for how favorites work.

Pic-Time's Advanced plan also adds AI photo search inside a gallery. The limit is scope: that search stays inside one delivered gallery, while an archive client needs to search across shoots.

Client favorites and notes on a searchable library link

For an archive, the shortlist has to sit on a searchable library, because the client's first problem is finding the photo, not marking it.

Tagrly's AI pass reads every photo in your Google Drive or Dropbox, or photos you upload, and writes a focal subject, supporting tags and a line of alt text, the method called focal-subject tagging. The scan runs unattended in the background, and the same tags power Tagrly's AI photo search. In Tagrly's own testing on a 5,000-photo set, focal-subject tagging surfaced the correct top match in roughly 9 of 10 searches.

A share link is a boundary drawn over that catalog, and Tagrly has two kinds:

• Collection link. A hand-picked set with hearts, a "picked" count and a Download picks button. No notes and no search box.
• Library link. Your library, optionally narrowed to collections, a pinned search or a minimum quality. Clients get a search box, hearts, a Picks button that filters to everything hearted on the link, and notes inside the photo viewer, plus a With notes filter once anyone leaves one. Left un-narrowed, it shows your whole library minus hidden photos, so narrow it per client; building a searchable client gallery walks through the setup.

Notes exist only on library links. Each is one line, capped at 280 characters, visible to everyone on the link, with no threads or replies. Authors can delete their own notes and you can delete any.

A note is labeled with the visitor's email if an email gate captured one, otherwise "Anonymous". The gate is self-reported: Tagrly checks the address looks real but sends no code.

Clients need no account to heart or note. Hearts are a Pro and Business control on Tagrly's plans, as are the password and email gate covered in the password protected gallery guide. Expiry, downloads on or off and the link's on/off switch come with every plan.

Warning. Hearts are share-wide: when anyone on the link hearts a photo, everyone on that link sees it as picked, and anyone can remove a heart for everyone. Agree up front who on the client's side has the final say.

Tip. Tagrly's free tier reads your first 100 photos, no credit card. Build a library link on your own photos to see the search box and notes before a client does; hearts come with Pro and Business.

Getting the shortlist back on your side

Each tool returns the shortlist in a different shape, so choose by what your next step needs.

• ShootProof. Copy a visitor's favorite filenames and paste them into Lightroom's Library text filter (Filename, Contains) to pull the selects. Spaces in filenames can break the match.
• Pic-Time. Download a user's favorites list, send it, or download it as a .csv. The Lightroom plugin can sync favorites into a Selections folder.
• Tagrly. Each link has an activity page listing the hearted photos (thumbnail, file name, the visitor's email when captured, when), every note in one table, and a log of views, hearts, downloads, notes and searches. Download picks zips everything hearted on the link when downloads are on.

Note. Tagrly sends no email or alert when a client hearts or notes, so check the link's activity page. Names in the zip and on that page are Tagrly's AI-written descriptive file names, not your camera file names, so there is no filename list to paste into Lightroom.

Whichever tool you pick, test the round trip first: heart three photos yourself, then confirm you can retrieve exactly those three.

Which photo gallery with client favorites fits you

Pick by where the shortlist has to end up: in Lightroom, with a client team, or in a small album.

• Retouching rounds into Lightroom, or print sales. Pick a proofing gallery like ShootProof or Pic-Time. Filename paste and Lightroom sync are their home turf.
• A client-side team choosing from an archive. Pick a Tagrly library link: one shared Picks list, notes on the photo and a search box across shoots. Pics.io is another Drive-based catalog worth checking.
• A dozen finals, one client. Pick a Google Photos shared album with commenting on, so likes stay on too.
• Feedback on one hero image. Pick Dropbox file comments pinned to an exact point.

A photo gallery with client favorites and notes comes down to where the shortlist lives: under each visitor's email, in a shared selection request, or on a library link a whole client team searches. For one shoot headed into Lightroom, proofing galleries have it solved. For an archive, a photo has to be findable before it can be hearted, and our guide to finding any photo in your library covers that first step.