ShootCal Galleries is the delivery side of ShootCal: you publish a shoot to a private, branded gallery, your client picks favorites and downloads the full-resolution files, and (launching soon) orders prints and wall art that a professional lab drop-ships under your brand. This article covers how the whole thing works, from publish to payout.
One client list with your ShootCal calendar #
Galleries and the ShootCal scheduling app use separate accounts that connect through the same verified email. They do not share passwords or browser sessions. The gallery client picker searches both places at once (your ShootCal clients show a badge), and picking one fills in their email and links the gallery to them. The galleries Clients page shows each client’s bookings and contract status from the app right next to their delivery activity.
You can create a client’s gallery the moment they book: from a client’s page in the app (web or Mac) there’s a Create Gallery button, and the Mac app’s new-event form has a “Create Client Gallery” toggle. Either way the gallery arrives as an empty, unlisted draft named after the client and already dated to their session, so nothing is visible to anyone until you share it. Prefer it fully automatic? Turn on Auto-create a gallery for each new ShootCal client in Settings and every new client you book gets a draft waiting.
Delivering a gallery #
A gallery is your cover photo full-screen, your studio name or logo, and a clean, justified grid of previews with a swipeable full-screen viewer. Each gallery can be public, unlisted (anyone with the link), or password protected on a paid plan; you choose per gallery.
When the gallery is ready, you send the delivery email from the composer: there is a Pixieset-style default template, a gallery-hero HTML email, a template dropdown (including any templates you save yourself), and insertable merge fields for the client’s name and the gallery link. Clients get fast, one-click full-resolution downloads of your untouched files.
Clients never create accounts. Opening the gallery just works from the link; to favorite photos or place an order they enter their email, and that’s it. This is deliberate: every client account you don’t force is a delivery that doesn’t stall at a login screen.
Proofing and favorites #
Every photo has a heart. Clients favorite the images they love, filter to just those, and send you their selections with one button. You see exactly which photos each client picked, which is what you want for albums, retouching lists, and print recommendations. Favorites are tied to the client’s email, so a couple can each make their own list.
Publishing from Lightroom Classic #
The ShootCal Galleries publish plugin turns a Lightroom Classic published collection into a gallery. Sign in once with your studio email and password, publish, and the collection uploads directly to cloud storage; re-edit and re-publish, and the gallery updates in place, including removals. If an upload is interrupted it heals itself on the next publish. Naming a new published collection exactly like an existing gallery — the one created at booking, for instance — uploads the photos into that gallery instead of creating a duplicate, and your gallery list sorts by whichever gallery most recently received photos, so it jumps to the top. You can download the plugin here, and the setup steps live in your studio admin under Settings.
Custom domains and branding #
On a paid plan you can point your own domain (say, clients.yourstudio.com) at ShootCal with a single CNAME record, and every gallery link you send lives on your domain: clients never see shootcal.com. Your logo and studio name appear on every gallery on every plan.
The print store #
Status: built, launching soon. The store is complete and in final testing with the lab; ordering switches on once that finishes. Here is how it works.
Clients shop straight from their gallery. The catalog is fulfilled by WHCC (White House Custom Colour), a professional lab, and every order is produced and drop-shipped under your brand:
- Photo prints on Lustre, Deep Matte, or Pearl paper, with optional borders and matboard or foamboard mounting.
- Gallery-wrap canvas with image-wrap, black, or white edges, ready to hang.
- Metal prints, dye-sublimated aluminum with a high-gloss finish.
- Acrylic prints, face-mounted on quarter-inch acrylic.
- Framed prints with real wood and metal mouldings, plus surface, mat, and hanging options.
- Standouts, maple wood prints, and freestanding acrylic blocks.
- Photo cards, 5×7 flat cards from a design library, sold in packs.
Every wall-art product opens a full-screen editor with a fixed print window: the client drags and zooms their photo inside the exact crop that will print, picks a size, and watches the price update live. A true-scale “See it on your wall” room preview shows the finished piece at real size before they buy. Checkout is a proper cart with cropped previews and clear line items, and after the order ships, the client gets a tracking email automatically.
Pricing you control, commission you mostly don’t pay #
You set the retail pricing. ShootCal’s default markup is a sliding scale, higher on small prints and lower on large wall art, so an 8×10 earns you a healthy margin without a 30×40 canvas costing your client a fortune. You can override any price.
The commission is simple: 15% on the Free plan, 0% on every paid plan. It is charged only on the product price, never on shipping or sales tax. There are no listing fees, no monthly store fee, and nothing charged when there are no sales. If you sell prints regularly, a $12/mo Plus plan with 0% commission almost always beats a free plan paying 15%.
Getting paid #
Payments go directly to you. In your studio admin, open Payouts and choose “Connect with Stripe” to link your own Stripe account (or create one on the spot). From then on you are the merchant of record: your client’s card payment settles into your Stripe balance on your normal payout schedule, and ShootCal never holds your money. The lab’s cost is handled automatically inside the transaction, so what lands with you is your margin.
Because the charge is yours, refunds and disputes are handled in your own Stripe dashboard. Paid orders wait for your review before the irreversible lab step (24 hours by default, with supported delays from 6 hours to 7 days, or you can release a clean order early). A full refund or dispute during that delay stops fulfillment and returns the ShootCal application fee. After WHCC accepts an order, its production cost cannot be reversed even if a later refund or chargeback occurs.
Sales tax #
ShootCal uses Stripe Tax to calculate sales tax automatically from the customer’s shipping address, using the correct destination rate. You add the states where you are registered to collect inside your own Stripe dashboard; checkout then collects tax for those states and it settles with the rest of the payment. Two honest notes: registering in Stripe is not the same as registering with a state (you need the state’s sales-tax license first), and ShootCal does not file returns for you. Checkout collects tax only where the connected Stripe account has an active registration. The photographer remains responsible for deciding where registration is required, configuring Stripe Tax, filing, and remitting; ShootCal does not provide tax advice or file returns.
Print credits #
You can issue a client a print credit, like a gift card scoped to their gallery, and let them spend it on their own wall art. Credits apply at checkout against the product total and shipping. One thing to know: the ShootCal commission is figured on the product price before the credit, the same way Pixieset does it, so a credit is a gift from you to your client rather than a discount on the commission.
Privacy and content safety #
Galleries are private by default and are never indexed or marketed. Client favorites are tied to their email only; there are no client accounts to breach. The platform runs professional content-safety scanning on uploads, and every gallery has a content-report link. Questions about the store or your plan? Reach out on the support page, I read every message.
