Help center — Dropa

Getting started

Make a gallery and get it to your client.

Create a gallery

Start a new gallery for a shoot in a few clicks.

1Open the new-gallery formClick New gallery in the top bar, or press ⌘K (Ctrl K on Windows) and choose New gallery.
2Name it and set the detailsGive the gallery a name, then set the session date and type. You can add your own session type if none fit.
3Choose how the client receives itPick Coworking (the client reviews, approves, and leaves voice notes and comments) or Presentation (a view-only delivery in a look you choose).
4Create itClick Create gallery. It opens ready for photos and stays a draft until you add images.

A brand-new gallery has no photos yet. Add them next, then share the link.

Upload photos

Drag your files onto the gallery, or click the upload tile.

1Open the galleryGo into the gallery you want to add photos to.
2Add your filesDrag files straight onto the photo grid, or click the upload tile (the large drop area in an empty gallery, or the lead tile once photos exist).
3Drop folders to make sub-galleriesDropping a folder of folders creates matching sub-galleries automatically, mirroring your folder structure.

Photos keep uploading in the background. Each one is stored at several sizes so galleries stay fast.

Sub-galleries

Group a shoot into sections, like Looks and Details, or Day one and Day two.

1From inside a galleryUse the gallery menu and choose New sub-gallery, then name it.
2Or drop foldersDrag a folder that contains sub-folders onto the gallery. Each sub-folder becomes its own sub-gallery.

Sub-galleries show as a breadcrumb, and deleting the parent takes its sub-galleries with it. In a presentation each is a tab at the top of the delivery.

Draft vs live galleries

Galleries start as drafts. Share the link whenever you're ready.

Every gallery is created as a draft so nothing goes out before you intend it to. Draft is mostly a label for you. It does not stop you from sharing.

You share a gallery by copying its link and sending it, at any time. There is no separate publish button.

When you deliver a client's Job (a bundle of galleries), those galleries are marked as delivered. That is the moment a gallery reads as live rather than draft.

On the Galleries page a live gallery wears a small green dot in the corner of its picture, in every layout; a draft carries nothing but a quieter name. Scanning a long list, the lighter names are the work still in progress.

Recent activity, and the thread behind a row

Open a row and the gallery's latest comments, voice notes and drawings are there, with their reference images; a thumbnail takes you to the photograph.

Recent activity on the overview lists what has happened across your galleries. The speech-bubble on a row opens its thread: the gallery’s latest comments, voice notes and drawings, newest first, each with a reply field. A voice note plays in place; a drawing shows its strokes over the frame.

If a client or teammate attached a reference image to a comment — “like this” — it appears under their words, at the size it was given. Press it and it lifts off the thread onto the page, with the words it came with beneath; Escape, a click outside or the cross puts it back where it was. Several references step with the arrows. It never opens a new tab.

The small thumbnail beside each note is a door: press it and the gallery workspace opens on that exact photograph with the viewer up, so you are one press from the picture the feedback was made on. Open the workspace, at the foot of the thread, goes to the gallery itself.

A reply can carry references of its own — up to three small images — by the clip beside the field, by dropping a picture onto it, or by pasting one from the clipboard; the mic dictates the words. The same is true of every reply in the gallery viewer, for you, your team and your clients alike. Hover any comment or reply in the thread for the … menu: Edit while its fifteen minutes are open, Delete at any time — and ⌘Z, or Undo on the pill, takes a deletion back while the pill is up.

Client review & feedback

How clients approve, select, and comment.

Invite a client to review

Use Coworking mode, then send them the gallery link.

1Use Coworking modeReview tools only appear in Coworking mode. Set it when you create the gallery, or later in the Share tab under Delivery mode.
2Send them the galleryIn the Share tab, type their name and address and press Send invite: the email goes out through dropa with the link and the access code. Or copy the link and send it your own way.
3Watch their progressAs they approve, select, and comment, you see it in the gallery Overview and your recent activity.

What clients can do in a gallery

Approve, select, rate, flag, comment, and leave voice notes.

In Coworking mode a client can approve or reject photos one at a time or in bulk, send their picks to you, rate with stars, and flag photos with colour markers.

They can leave comments pinned to a specific point on a photo, and reply in a thread. They can also leave voice notes on a photo.

Voice notes write themselves down: while a note records, the browser transcribes it, so the words appear under the note (marked Heard), show up in search, and are quoted in the notification email. The transcription uses the device's own dictation — on a Mac, keep Dictation on in System Settings → Keyboard; without it the note still saves, just without the words.

Which of these are available depends on the permissions you set in the gallery's Collaboration settings (likes and voting, comments, flagging, and so on).

For feedback that is easier said than typed, the camera on their toolbar reads Record: it records their screen and their voice as they talk through the gallery, and the recording is saved to the gallery for you to play back.

There are three ways to give a verdict: hover a photograph in the grid and use the ✓ or ✗ on it, open it and use Approve in the lightbox, or select several and approve or reject the lot at once. Tapping a verdict again takes it back. The Send review button on the toolbar wakes as soon as one photograph has been decided, and its tooltip counts what is about to travel.

Two different things wear the word “select”, so it is worth naming them apart. Approving and rejecting is a verdict on one photograph — the ✓ and ✗ on the frame, or in the lightbox. Select mode is the checkboxes, for doing something to several frames at once: making a set, downloading them, flagging them — and approving or rejecting the lot in one go. The button on the toolbar does neither; it SENDS the review — every verdict, with the comments and notes already left along the way — which is why it reads Send review.

The running tally in their toolbar — “2 approved · 1 rejected” — is also the way to start over: it asks first, names the exact number, and clears only the picks. Comments, drawings and voice notes are untouched.

Sending a selection is not a one-way door. Once it is with you the client's button reads Review sent, with Reopen beside it: they can take it back, adjust, and send again. Their approvals are kept when they do — reopening is a chance to change a selection, not to start it over — and you are told in your activity feed either way.

Your client opens the same workspace you work in — the same masthead, search, filters, sort, grouping, sets and lightbox. What they do not get is the administration: no settings, no uploading, no deleting, renaming, moving or copying, no versions, no sharing or inviting, no AI tools, no portfolio, and no internal notes. Those controls are absent on their side rather than greyed out.

Everything they leave is signed with the name they gave at the door, so you always know who said what.

In Presentation mode the gallery is view-only, so none of these tools appear.

Letting clients add files

Switch on Client uploads and a drop tile appears on their side.

Open the gallery's Collaboration settings and switch on Client uploads. A drop tile then appears in the client's grid and an upload icon on their toolbar, exactly where yours are.

It is for the things a client brings to a shoot conversation: a reference they want matched, a packshot from the brand, a layout the photographs have to sit in. They can drag files straight onto the page or click the tile.

Every file they add lands in the gallery as a normal photograph and appears in your activity feed under the name they gave at the door, so you always know what arrived and from whom.

Your client also has their own overflow menu in the top-right of the banner. It is a short one: start a new set, print a contact sheet, download everything, and put the drop card away or bring it back. Nothing that administers the delivery reaches it.

They cannot upload a folder — that would create sub-galleries, which is arranging the delivery, and stays with you. Their files also skip the version check and the duplicate check, so they never overwrite or attach themselves to your own frames.

There are two upload controls and they do different things. The ⬆ on the toolbar and the card in the grid both open the file picker — the card is there while you are looking at the grid, the toolbar button is there once you have scrolled past it. The third icon, which only appears once the card has been put away, brings the card back rather than uploading anything.

Either of you can minimise the drop card with the small chevron in its corner — it folds down to the bar, where an upload key lights up to bring it back. Yours is a gallery setting; theirs is remembered only in their own browser, so putting yours away never takes away their way in.

The switch is off by default, has no effect in Presentation mode, and a gallery behind a password stays closed until the password is given.

The gallery's own conversation

One thread per delivery, in rooms, for everything that isn't about a single photograph.

A comment answers “this photograph”: it hangs on one frame, at one spot, and belongs next to the image. Gallery chat answers “this job” — the deadline, the invoice, the reshoot, the question that has no coordinates on a picture.

You will find it behind the round button in the bottom-right of the gallery, on your side and on your client's. Everyone starts in the room called Everyone: the same thread for all of you, appearing on each other's screens without anybody reloading the page. The button carries a mark counting what has arrived since you last looked, across every room.

The + beside the rooms opens a private one. Yours can be with any single person in the gallery, or the Team room — that one is for the people with an account at your studio, and a client cannot read it even holding the link and the password. A private room with a client is private in the ordinary sense: only the two of you see it, and it is as private as the link itself, because a visitor is a name at a door rather than an account.

Write the way you write anywhere else in dropa: @ a name to notify them by email, attach a reference image with the paperclip, dictate with the waveform, or hold the mic on the right to send a voice note with its own transcript.

You can correct your own message for fifteen minutes after sending it, and delete it at any time. An edited message says “edited”, so nobody has to wonder whether what they read this morning is still what it says. A recording cannot be rewritten — but the words underneath it can, which is how you fix a name the transcript misheard.

A message from your client reaches your activity feed and your email like any other feedback, so nothing waits unread in a browser tab.

A gallery shared in Presentation mode has no chat at all: a screening is a showing, not a conversation. Switch it to Coworking if you want to be able to talk there.

Versions

Same name, new pixels — dropa asks, keeps the history, and resets the client's approval honestly.

Drop a file whose name matches a photograph already in the gallery and whose pixels differ — a retouched export, a corrected file — and dropa asks once for the batch: add as a new version, keep both as separate photos, or skip.

A new version keeps the frame’s identity: same place in the gallery, same comments, same sets. The old file isn’t thrown away — it becomes the version history, and the photo quietly wears a v2 mark in the viewer.

The client’s approval resets when a new version arrives, and the activity feed says so. An approval given on the old pixels must never silently stand for pixels the client hasn’t seen. Your own stars and flags stay — they describe the frame, not the file.

Notes written on an earlier version keep a small v1 mark, so “can we brighten this?” is never mistaken for a note about the brightened file.

If the file is byte-identical to one you already have, there’s nothing to ask — dropa recognises it and simply doesn’t store it twice.

Earlier rounds take up storage, and your storage counts them: Settings › Your Plan shows how much of it is earlier rounds of retouching, as the paler part of the meter. When a project is done, Remove earlier rounds… in the gallery’s ⋯ menu (or Remove… beside that line in Settings, for the whole studio) keeps the current file of every photograph and moves the earlier rounds to the Bin, as one entry you can restore for 30 days. Before anything happens it says how many rounds, across how many photographs, and how much space it frees — only files nothing else uses count, so a round whose file is still a photograph in another gallery frees nothing, and it says so. Comments and voice notes left on earlier rounds stay.

Internal notes & resolving feedback

A private channel for the studio inside the same thread, and a check that closes the loop on every note.

Every note — a comment, a voice note, a drawing — is open until someone says it is handled. The small circle-check on a note marks it resolved: the row quiets down but never disappears, because what was asked and what was answered is the record. Tap again to reopen it.

When you write a comment, the Internal switch on the composer keeps it inside the studio. An internal note never reaches the client — not in their gallery, not in counts — so you and your retoucher can talk through a frame in the same thread the client is reading.

Internal is the studio’s switch only. Clients can’t write internal notes, and nothing they see hints that internal notes exist.

Mentions still work inside internal notes — @ a teammate and they’re emailed a link straight to the note, so pulling a retoucher into a frame is one line.

A comment can carry reference images — up to three, added with the paperclip on the composer, dropped onto it, or pasted from the clipboard; a reply can carry them the same way. “More like this” lands with the this attached. Press a reference and it lifts onto the page, over the viewer or the overview, and settles back where it was on Escape. Your own words — a comment, a reply — can be corrected for fifteen minutes and deleted at any time, from the … that appears at the end of the sentence; a corrected sentence says “edited”. The studio can delete anything in its own galleries. A deleted comment, reply, voice note or drawing can be taken back for a few seconds: press Undo on the pill, or ⌘Z. References are pointers, not photographs: they never join the gallery, the Showroom or a delivery, and they’re removed with the comment.

Colour flags

One shared workflow flag per photo, in your own words, round-tripping with your editor.

A flag is the team’s shared workflow state for a photo — one per photo, set by you or the client, last change wins. The defaults read as a review: No · Maybe · Yes · Final · Retouch. Approve/Reject stays the client’s verdict, stars stay quality, votes and sets stay personal.

Once a photo is flagged, the word sits on the frame in the grid — a small swatch in the flag’s colour and the word itself, top right — so everyone in the gallery can read what has been decided without hovering or opening anything. It steps aside while you hover (the flag button in that corner shows the same colour) and stays put in select mode. Group · Flag in the toolbar lays the whole gallery out as one section per flag.

Rename any flag or switch it off in Settings → Defaults → Colour flags. The colour underneath is fixed on purpose: it is what Lightroom and Capture One know as their colour labels, so a flag always round-trips.

Into the editor: the To editor button in a gallery exports XMP sidecars (stars, flags, approve/reject, comments) for all photos or just what’s on screen — drop them next to your originals and the catalogue reads them on its next scan. It also copies a filename list to paste into Lightroom’s filter, Capture One’s search or Bridge.

From the editor: files exported with metadata arrive in dropa already flagged and rated, and the upload toast says how many came through. Drop .xmp sidecars onto a gallery later to bring in a cull done after the upload.

Keyboard, in the viewer: Shift + 1–5 sets the flags in the order you show them, Shift + 0 clears.

picdrop’s flags only leave as a filename list and never come back in; dropa reads and writes the real metadata in both directions.

Sets

Named, permanent selections — each person keeps their own, nothing overwrites anyone else.

A set is a named selection that is saved for good. Approve and reject are one shared verdict per photo; sets are many parallel opinions — the client’s “Final picks”, the art director’s “For print”, your own “Hero shots” — all living side by side in one gallery.

In the gallery, select photos and choose New set; name it and add an optional note for the team. Open the Sets pill to see every set grouped by who saved it. Click one to show only those photos; hover for Edit (the selection re-opens pre-filled so you can add or remove), Approve all, and Delete.

Adding to a set that already exists does not mean rebuilding it. Open a photograph’s more menu and choose Add to set, or select several and use Add to set on the selection bar: tick a set to put them in, untick to take them out. A tick means every chosen frame is already in that set; a dash means some are, and clicking adds the rest.

From the client link, each photo has a + that gathers a draft; Save set asks for a name, the person’s name, an optional email and message. Clients can edit and delete only the sets they saved — the studio can manage all of them.

Every saved set reaches the gallery’s followers the same way a comment does: the bell, an instant email or the daily digest (per person’s preference), with a link that opens the gallery on that set.

A set can travel as a set. On its masthead, or from Sets on the Galleries page (the word beside All, Live and Drafts), choose Copy to… or Move to… and pick a gallery. Copy leaves the photographs where they are and lands a copy of each, and the set, in the other gallery, under the same name and owner, with no extra storage. Move takes the photographs with it, and the room tells you first how many of them other sets here also hold, because those sets will lose them. A brief keeps its ask on a move; on a copy it arrives as a plain set, since the retouched versions belong on the client’s own frames. A set with the same name by the same person in the other gallery is merged into, never doubled. To make a new gallery from a set, choose New gallery inside the same room.

If a photo is later deleted for good it simply drops out of the sets that held it; the set stays. Sets don’t appear in Presentation mode, which is view-only.

Request a selection

A set with an ask — how many, by when, how to choose — that the client fills and submits.

Sometimes a selection needs a shape: twenty-five to thirty for the album, by Friday, one per look. A selection request is a set that carries that ask, so the choosing has a finish line instead of trailing off.

In the gallery’s Sets section, choose Request a selection. Give it a name, a count — at least, at most, or both (leave one empty for “at least 25” or “up to 30”) — an optional due date, and a line on how to choose. You can also start one from selected photos with New set: switch on Ask for a selection in the same sheet.

On the client link the request wears its ask: the count, the deadline, your guidance, and a progress line that fills as they pick. Choose photos opens the gallery with a + on every frame; the request stops them politely at the maximum, and Submit stays closed until the minimum is met.

Submit closes the request and rings you — the bell, an instant email or the daily digest, whichever each follower chose. The set card in your gallery shows Awaiting while it’s open and Submitted, with the name, once it’s in; Reopen on that card lets the client change their mind.

Anyone on the link can fill an open request — it is the one set that doesn’t belong to its saver — but once submitted it locks until you reopen it.

A submitted selection pairs naturally with versions: when the retouched files come back, upload them onto the same photographs and the originals step aside.

See a client's selections and feedback

The gallery Overview shows their progress, and activity keeps a log.

Open the gallery and look at the Overview. The status section shows how far the client has got, with approved and rejected counts and a review progress figure.

Drawing on a photograph: the tools are a pen, a box, a circle and an eraser, in three line weights — thin, medium and thick — and five inks: red, chartreuse, white and black, and a circle of your own. Press its + to choose any colour from the studio's colour field; it stays your colour until you change it (press it again while it is the ink). A box, a circle, or a pen line that closes on itself is washed inside with a light tint of its own ink, so whoever reads it sees exactly the area you mean; an open line stays a line.

Inside a photograph, each drawing, comment and voice note has an eye beside it: quiet a single marker to see the frame underneath without deleting anyone’s words. The Show annotations switch still clears them all at once (or press H).

Client actions (approvals, selections, comments, and downloads) also appear in your recent activity feed and can raise a notification.

Every activity row is a door: click it to land in that gallery’s workspace. Hover a row for more — the speech bubble opens the latest comments and voice notes right there, where you can listen, reply into the real thread, and acknowledge with a thumb the client sees on their own page (“Seen by the studio”). Clear removes a row on every device until something new happens in that gallery, and Clear all beside the section title empties the feed — with an Undo if you change your mind.

Portfolio, Folios & Showroom

Curate your best work and publish it.

Portfolio vs Folios vs Showroom

Browse everything, curate your best, publish themed sets.

Showroom is everything you have ever shot, in one browsable view. It is your whole archive, deduplicated so each photo shows once, and you can search it by what is in the picture. Its search and layout bar stays with you as you scroll, on a solid plate so the photographs pass behind it rather than through it.

Portfolio is your curated pool of best work. You hand-pick shots from across all your jobs with the bookmark, and they gather here.

Folios are themed mini-sites you publish from the Portfolio. Choose a set, give it a look, and share it as its own page.

In one line: Showroom is everything, Portfolio is your best, Folios are shareable themed sets of your best.

Add a photo to your Portfolio

Bookmark any photo to gather it into your curated Portfolio.

1Hover the photoHover any photo and click the bookmark icon. It fills in to show the photo is in your Portfolio.
2Or use the menusYou can also choose Add to portfolio from a photo's ⋯ menu, from the multi-select bar, or from ⌘K.

Any photo from any gallery can go into a Folio — it doesn’t have to be in your Portfolio. Portfolio and Folios are two separate judgements: your best, and what this audience sees.

Organise your Portfolio

Drag to reorder, group by gallery or job, and pin a hero.

Drag any tile onto another to reorder your Portfolio. Your manual order is kept and beats the default newest-first order.

You can group the view by All, Gallery, or Job to find things, and organise photos into Folio sections.

Use the hero control on a tile to pin a lead image, which leads the Portfolio's banner.

Looking for Collections?

What picdrop calls a Collection is a Folio here — and working selections are Sets.

A Folio is what picdrop calls a Collection: a virtual grouping of photos from any galleries, no copies, no extra storage, visible only to your studio until you choose to publish it. Rename, download, delete, export it as a new gallery, or share a link — and, unlike a Collection, publish it as an editorial micro-site at /folio/your-name.

Any photo from any gallery can go into a Folio. Use Add to Folio on a photo (grid or viewer), tap photos in an empty Folio, or drag from the Portfolio.

For working selections — a client’s picks, an art director’s shortlist, “the ones for the pitch” — use Sets. Each person keeps their own, they live in the gallery they were saved in, and the Galleries page lists every set across all galleries: choose Sets in the headline beside All, Live and Drafts, with download, XMP and link actions.

If you delete a photo for good it leaves every Folio and Set it was in; the Folio or Set itself stays.

Create a Folio

Publish a themed set of your best work as its own mini-site.

1Start a new FolioPress ⌘K and choose New folio, or open the Folios tab and click New Folio.
2Name and describe itGive it a name and a short description, then create it.
3Fill itTap photos in the empty Folio (your Portfolio is offered first, then every gallery), drag from the Portfolio, or use Add to Folio on any photo in a gallery or the viewer.

Publish and theme a Folio

Make it public, set a clean link, and pick a page theme.

1Open the folio's visibility panelFrom the folio, open its visibility settings.
2Make it publicSwitch it to Public. It now lives at its own page, and you can edit the link slug and copy it to share.
3Pick a page themeChoose a page theme to set the mood (background, text, and accent). The layout stays the clean folio spread.
4Share itUnder the link, Share opens your device's share sheet (or copies the invitation where there is none), Email starts a message with the link, and QR code shows a code to scan from a printed card or a phone across the table.
5Keep it private with a codeTurn on Require an access code and dropa writes a code at once, easy to read aloud: no 0 or O, no 1, I or L. Press New code for another, or type your own. Visitors see only the folio's title and a door until they enter it, in any case; no photograph is sent before that, and the unlock lasts on their device. With a code on, Copy link & code copies both, and Share and Email carry the code with the link.

A folio only opens for visitors once it's public. While private, its page is not reachable. Changing the code closes the door again for anyone who has not entered the new one.

A folio's menu, and merging folios

Every folio card has a ⋯ menu; Merge with… combines folios into one.

1Open a folio's menuOn Folios, rest on a card and press ⋯ in its corner. Open, Publish or Make private, Copy link (with the code, when the folio has one), Preview, Rename, Share as gallery, Merge with… and Delete are all there.
2Merge foliosChoose Merge with… on one folio, then click the others to combine, or pick them with Select. With two or more picked, press Merge on the bar.
3Choose the one to keepThe sheet suggests the public one, or the fullest. The kept folio's name, link, theme and access code stay, and every photograph from the others joins it; a photograph already in it is not added twice.

The other folios are deleted, with any leads they captured, and their links stop working. The photographs themselves stay where they are. A merge can't be undone.

Browse everything in the Showroom

Your whole archive in one place, with layouts and search.

The Showroom shows every photo you have across all galleries, deduplicated so each image appears once. It is where you go to find any shot fast.

Switch between layouts (grid, masonry, wall, list, and more) and change the zoom from dense thumbnails up to large tiles.

Use the search box to find photos by what is in them. You can also filter by session type and other facets. The bar carrying it follows you down the page on a solid plate, so it stays readable over the photographs.

Two buttons beside the zoom arrange what you see. Date gathers the photos into one section per month. Gallery gathers them into one section per gallery, newest first, each titled with the gallery's name, its count, and Open gallery to go straight into it. One grouping at a time: pressing one releases the other. Every section keeps the zoom's own tile size, so a gallery of one photograph shows it as small as a gallery of two hundred.

Right-click any photograph to pick it; the bar at the foot carries what you can do with the pick.

Open a photograph to look at it large. Scroll or pinch on the trackpad to zoom into it, up to four times, about the point under the pointer; click to dive in at that point, drag to move around, click again or press Escape to come back out. The ruler at the bottom right shows the level and can be dragged; + and − step, 0 returns to the whole frame. The photograph is never cropped, and past one and a half times the full-resolution file takes over.

Every control in the viewer names itself and its key when you rest on it. The keys: ← → to move, I for the photo's details, E to edit, D to download, F for full screen, Z to zoom in and out, Esc to close. The pill at the top right tucks the three canvas colours behind its arrow, as in the Design Studio.

Working with photos

Edit, download, reorder, and read metadata.

Acting on exactly what you filtered

Filter the grid, then use the strip above it to download, copy or export that exact set.

Whenever a filter narrows the grid — a colour flag, a star rating, a search, a vendor or a colour — a strip appears above the photos saying how many of the gallery you are looking at, for example “Filtered · 24 of 180”.

On the right of that strip are the things you can do with exactly those photographs: Download these downloads that shortlist and nothing else; Copy list puts their filenames on the clipboard, ready to paste into Lightroom's filter, Capture One's search or an email; To editor writes one .xmp sidecar per filtered photo, carrying the stars, flags, picks and comments.

To see the whole review at once, choose Group · Flag in the toolbar. The grid becomes one section per flag — Final, Yes, Retouch, Maybe, No, then Unflagged — each with its own heading and count, and each with the same verbs on its right: Select these (which opens the selection bar with that row already picked, so you can approve, flag or make a set of them), Download, Copy list and To editor. Flags nobody has used are left out. The same menu lays the gallery out by other readings too: Verdict, Rating and Discussed for the review; Type (RAW, TIFF, JPEG, PNG and so on) and Orientation for the files; Day, Camera and Lens for the shoot; Colour for the look. Sort · offers the same families — Aspect, Captured, Colour, Focal length, Comments and Verdict alongside Name, Size, Resolution, Added, Rating and Votes.

Clear filter puts the whole gallery back.

Your clients see the same strip. If they filter down to the frames they marked, they can download or export that exact selection themselves — no need to ask you for it.

Opening a set is not a filter — a set is a room of its own, with its own heading and its own actions.

The toolbar above the grid: pinned or scrolling

View options (the ⇅ button at the right of the toolbar) has a switch: keep the toolbar in view while you scroll, or let it scroll away with the page.

The bar above the grid — the count, search, flags, stars, sort, grouping, density and Select — stays at the top of the page while you scroll, so a filter or a sort is always one click away.

If you would rather have the whole screen for the photographs, open View options (the button with the sort-arrows glyph, at the right of the bar) and switch off Keep toolbar in view. The bar then scrolls away with the banner, and comes back when you scroll up to it.

The same panel holds the other two ways of looking at the grid: Full frame or Fill for the thumbnails, and Asset details for the size, badge and AI scene under each name.

All three are remembered on this computer, for every gallery — they are how you like to look at a grid, not a fact about the gallery itself, so nothing about them travels to your client.

Select several photos at once

Enter selection mode, then apply a bulk action.

1Start selectingEnter selection mode in the gallery and click the photos you want. A toolbar shows how many are selected.
2Apply an actionFrom the toolbar you can add the selection to your Portfolio or a Folio, download them, or delete them together.

One grid, three places

The workspace, the coworking link and the presentation lay out with the same rows. The order is the order; a featured frame reads the same everywhere.

Your workspace lays its photographs out in the same rows as the delivery: every row full width, every photograph at its own ratio, read left to right and top to bottom in exactly your order. The coworking link is the same grid with the tools removed, and the presentation packs with the same rule, so what you arrange is what the client gets, to the row. A featured frame takes the same size in all three.

The S · M · L control sets the row height. Large is the delivery’s own size; Medium is a review size; Small is a contact sheet. A client’s coworking link opens at Medium. Your workspace remembers whatever you chose last, per gallery.

Beside it, Rows and Masonry choose how the workspace shows the grid to you. The client’s presentation has its own arrangement, chosen in the Design Studio (Rows by default, or Columns, Sorted, Sheet, Editorial, Scattered, Single) — whichever it is, the order is your order and every photograph is whole

Sorting and grouping change the order in every place at once. Drag a photograph to another position and the client reads it there.

Feature a frame

Feature a frame at two sizes — Large shares its row with one other frame, Full takes a row of its own — always at its own ratio. Nothing around it is cropped; the page re-balances.

Open a photograph’s more menu in the gallery and choose a size. Large shares its row with exactly one other frame, so a landscape comes out about one and a half times its usual width and a portrait stands taller than its neighbours, while the page keeps its rhythm. Full width takes a whole row to itself, a landscape across the page and a portrait as a centred plate, never taller than the screen. In your workspace the tile grows to match, with the frames around it moving to make room, so you see the change where you made it. The tile carries a small Large or Full mark; the same menu offers Reset size to put that frame back, and the toast offers Undo too. To put every frame back at the grid’s own size in one move, open the gallery’s menu and choose Reset sizes; Undo restores each frame at the size it had. The page never leaves a gap for it: the rows around a featured frame are re-broken so every row still fills the width, and a Full landscape takes the whole width at its own ratio. A Full portrait is a centred plate never taller than the screen; a Large pair may stand a little taller than the screen, which is worth a short scroll.

Nothing else changes shape. The page is laid out like a magazine: every row is full width, every photograph keeps its own ratio, and when you feature a frame the photographs before it are simply re-broken into full rows of their own. There is no shrinking, no squeezing and no cropping to make the space.

On the Design Studio’s stage the same two sizes sit in a chip at the frame’s corner, and every arrangement answers in its own grammar: in Columns a Large frame spans two columns and a Full one spans them all; in Sorted, Large shares a row with one other frame and Full takes a row of its own; on the Sheet, Large takes a two-by-two block and Full a block the width of the sheet; in Editorial and Scattered a featured frame takes a band of its own, Large at the band’s largest and Full the width of the page. Single has nothing larger to give. A Full frame is never taller than the screen.

Nothing disappears while it happens. When you enlarge a frame, move one, balance the order or choose another arrangement or stop, every frame glides from where it was to where it now sits; the frame you touched steps forward with a soft lift while the others recede for a beat and return, and the page’s height eases with it. With Reduce Motion on, the page simply re-lays out.

Pressing and holding a frame hangs a small badge with the four arrows of a move off the pointer, so you know it is held and can be carried; at rest the pointer stays the ordinary arrow. Dragging a frame on the stage carries the photograph with your hand as a small print and previews the order as you go: the frame leaves a blue-ringed hole that travels to where it would land, and the other frames make room around it. Let go and it snaps home, and the new order is saved with Undo in the pill; let go anywhere else and everything glides back.

Use them sparingly. Large is the everyday emphasis; Full width is for one or two openers per gallery. Feature every third frame and nothing is featured.

Only the studio can feature a frame. The delivery is your layout; the client says what they love through sets, flags and approvals.

Galleries, sub galleries and sets

A set is a list of frames you already have. A sub gallery is a separate space. Sets cost nothing, and in dropa neither do copies.

1Use a set whenSeveral people are choosing from the same gallery, or one gallery serves several purposes: print picks, web picks, the album edit. Nothing is copied and nothing is charged.
2Use a sub gallery whenA section needs its own identity or its own audience. Getting ready, ceremony, reception. Exterior, ground floor, upper floor. Each can be shared on its own.
3Put one frame in two placesOpen a photograph’s more menu, or select several and use the selection bar, and choose Move or copy to gallery. Copy leaves them where they are and puts them in the other gallery as well. Move takes them out of this one.
4Quick viewQuick view opens a gallery without leaving the Galleries page, at its first photograph. The frames stand in one reel, each fitted to the screen at its own proportions: scroll or flick to move through them, and the reel settles on a frame, never between two. Beside the reel a small rail holds every frame as a print on frosted glass and glides with you; a hairline box travels along the prints with the scroll and its number stands above. With hundreds of frames the rail is the quick way to find one: scroll or drag the prints themselves, the box stays on your frame, and a click on any print glides there; leave the rail alone for a moment and it slides back to your frame. The prints nearest the box swell a touch as it passes, and when a gallery spans several months a hairline marks where each month begins, with the month named under the count. The ↑ ↓ ← → keys and Space step; Home and End jump to the first and last. Each frame carries its name beneath it, and under that its size, camera, exposure and day when the file holds them. In dark mode the glass is smoked. On a phone the rail lies along the foot of the screen. Space opens and closes Quick view on the gallery under the pointer.
5A gallery's card has a menuOn the Galleries page hover any card and press ⋯ for everything you would do without opening it: Open, Quick view, Download (the originals, sub-galleries as folders), Copy link, QR code, Pin, Rename, make it live or a draft, Select, and Move to Bin (undoable). The menu opens above the dots when there is no room below, and the page holds still while it is open.
6Pick several galleriesRight-click a card to pick it — in every layout, Magazine, Index, Cards or Stack. Once one is picked, every plain click adds or removes the next, and another right-click adds too; the bar at the foot counts them and offers Download, Merge and Delete. Clear or Esc ends picking. The Portfolio, the Showroom and the Folios pick the same way.
7Copying costs you nothingA copy in dropa shares the stored file. The same frame can sit in a dozen galleries and it is stored, and counted, once. This is worth knowing if you have used other delivery tools, where copying a frame into a sub gallery duplicates the file and is charged twice.

Three ways to organise, and the difference is worth two minutes because it decides how your work is arranged for years.

A GALLERY is a body of work. One shoot, one project, one delivery.

A SUB GALLERY is a gallery inside a gallery. It has its own settings, its own link, its own password and its own sets. Use one when a part of the shoot needs to stand on its own, or when a client should see only that part. In a presentation, each sub gallery is a tab at the top of the delivery; set one to private and it stays yours.

A SET is a named list of frames that already live in a gallery. Nothing is duplicated. A frame can sit in as many sets as you like, and a set can be made by you or by whoever is reviewing. Sets belong to one gallery, so a set cannot reach across two, but a whole set can be copied or moved to another gallery and it arrives as a set.

Where a photograph lives

GALLERY  Coastal House — Feb
│
├── the frames live here. one gallery owns each one.
│
├── SET  For the album          points at 12 of them
├── SET  Client's first picks   points at 30 of them
└── SET  Press                  points at 6 of them

        a frame can be in every set at once.
        a set never copies anything.

A shoot with sub galleries

GALLERY  Coastal House — Feb
│
├── SUB  Exteriors        own link · own password · own sets
├── SUB  Interiors        own link · own password · own sets
└── SUB  Final delivery   copy the chosen frames in here

        each sub gallery can be shared on its own.
        copying into one costs no extra storage.

The three that reach across galleries

PORTFOLIO   your best work, from any gallery      one click, no copy
FOLIO       a set made for an audience            no copy
SHOWROOM    every photograph you have, in one     nothing to add

            a set stays inside its gallery.
            a folio does not — it can pull from any of them.

Make a contact sheet

Real pages you can print or save as PDF. A gallery, a sub gallery, or a single set — each one its own sheet.

1Open itFrom the gallery menu choose Contact sheet, or use a set's own Contact sheet to make one from just those frames.
2Set the pageChoose the format, orientation, margins and how many rows and columns. The preview is the printed page, at size.
3Choose what sits under each frameNumbers, file names, stars and flags. Comments can print as a count or in full, under the frame they belong to.
4Print or savePrint, or choose Save as PDF in the print dialogue. Command and P works from the sheet.

A contact sheet is the whole take on paper, small, all at once. It is the oldest useful thing in photography and it still beats a screen for judging a series, because you see the frames in relation to each other instead of one at a time.

What you see in the preview is exactly what prints. The page is laid out at real page size, so saving as PDF from the print dialogue gives you the same pages, not an approximation of them.

Frames are never cropped to fit. Each one sits inside its cell at its own proportions.

Where a sheet can come from

GALLERY      the gallery menu, Contact sheet
SUB GALLERY  open it, then the same menu
SET          the set's own Contact sheet

             each is a separate sheet of only its own frames.

What you can put on the page

PAPER      A4 · Letter · A3     portrait or landscape
           white · ivory · charcoal
GRID       rows × columns · margins · spacing
UNDER      number · file name · stars · flag
           comments, as a count or in full
PAGES      your logo · a running head · a cover page
           a QR that opens the real gallery
GROUPING   each set on its own page

Your settings are remembered, so the next sheet opens the way you left the last one.

How to structure a shoot

One gallery for the shoot, sub galleries where a part needs its own audience, sets for everything else.

1Start with one galleryMake a gallery for the shoot and put everything in it. Do not split it up before you know how it will be used.
2Review it downRate and flag as you go. Hover a frame and press 1 to 5 for stars, or Shift and a number for a flag.
3Save the outcome as a setSelect the frames you settled on and save them as a named set. Nothing is copied and you can change it later.
4Split only when someone needs their own viewIf a client, an editor or an agency should see only part of it, make a sub gallery and copy those frames in. They get their own link and their own password.

The rule of thumb: a sub gallery is for a different AUDIENCE, a set is for a different PURPOSE.

If someone should be able to open a link and see only that part, make it a sub gallery. If the same people are looking at the same frames for different reasons, make sets.

Sets cost nothing and can be changed at any time, so when you are unsure, start with sets. You can always copy frames into a sub gallery later, and copying costs no extra storage.

An interiors commission

GALLERY  Ferry Road — interiors
│
├── SUB  For the architect       they see only this
│   └── SET  Structural details
│
├── SUB  For the magazine        they see only this
│   ├── SET  Opening spread
│   └── SET  Six for the feature
│
└── SUB  Final delivery          the chosen frames, copied in

A campaign, one audience, several purposes

GALLERY  Spring campaign
│
├── SET  Art director's picks
├── SET  For print
├── SET  For social
└── SET  Approved for retouch

        no sub galleries here. one audience, one link.
        the same frame sits in several sets at once.

Keyboard shortcuts for culling

Rate, flag, like and file without lifting your hand. The keys work on the frame under the cursor, or on a whole selection.

1Rate0 to 5 set the star rating. 0 clears it.
2FlagShift and 1 to 5 set a colour flag, in the order your studio shows them. Shift and 0 clears it. The words are your own, from Settings.
3Like and fileL likes a frame. P saves it to your Portfolio.
4Open and downloadIn the lightbox, D downloads the frame, Z zooms, I shows the file information, and the arrow keys move through the shoot.
5Full screenF gives the photograph the whole screen and takes the panels away. Move the mouse to the very edge and a panel slides back over the frame for as long as you need it; the arrow at its corner keeps it there. The controls fade out when you stop moving and come back the moment you do. F again, or Escape, gives your workspace back exactly as it was.
6SelectingClick with Command to pick one frame, Shift to take a run of them, and Option to take one back out. Command and D clears the selection. Escape clears it and leaves selection mode.

The keys are Lightroom Classic's, so if you cull there you already know them.

They work two ways. Hover a frame and press a key to judge that one. Or select several frames first and the key applies to all of them at once.

Every key toggles. Press 3 on frames that are already three stars and the rating clears.

Merge galleries into one

Yes. Pick them, choose the one to keep, and the others pour their photographs into it.

1Pick the galleriesOn Galleries, press Select and click the galleries to combine. With two or more picked, the bar at the foot of the page offers Merge.
2Choose the one to keepThe sheet lists them with their covers. The kept gallery's name, link, client, design and settings are the ones that survive. dropa suggests the live one, or the fullest.
3Read what will happen, then mergeThe sheet says how many photographs will move and into which gallery, and names any of the others that are live, because their client links will stop working.

The photographs join the kept gallery after its own, each gallery's frames in their own order. Comments, drawings, voice notes, ratings, flags and versions come with them, and so do their sets.

Sub galleries of a merged gallery move under the kept one.

The emptied galleries go to the Bin for 30 days. Restoring one brings back the gallery itself, empty; its photographs stay where they were merged.

Move or copy photos to another gallery

Both. Copy shares the stored file, so the same frame in several galleries is stored once.

1One frame, or manyFor a single photograph, open its more menu on the tile and choose Move or copy to gallery. In the lightbox, open More and choose Move to gallery: the menu turns into the list of galleries, opened on Move, with Copy one press away; the lightbox steps on to the next photograph once the frame has gone. There is no need to select it first.
2For a run of themSelect the photos and use the same choice on the selection bar. Click with Command to pick them one at a time, or Shift to take a run.
3Choose the verb firstCopy leaves the frames where they are and puts them in the other gallery as well. Move takes them out of this one. The panel tells you which you are about to do.
4Choose wherePick any of your galleries. Sub galleries show the gallery they belong to, so two shoots with a Ceremony are never confused.

A copy shares the stored file. Putting the same frame in five galleries costs what one costs, and your storage is counted once.

What comes with a copy: the photograph, everything measured from it, and your own rating and flag.

What does not: anything a client did. Approvals, likes and drawings belong to the review of one gallery, so a copy starts clean. An approval given in one client's gallery should never appear in another's.

Edit a photo

Open the editor to crop, rotate, straighten, and tone, without losing the original.

1Open the editorFrom a photo's menu, open the photo editor.
2Make your changesCrop and reframe, straighten, rotate or flip, and adjust tone.
3SaveSave to apply your changes. The edit is non-destructive, so your original is kept and you can revert later.

Download photos

Download a single original, or a zip of many at once.

1One photoUse the download action on a photo to save the untouched original.
2Many at onceSelect photos, or use the gallery's download options, to pull a zip of the set (all, or just the approved ones).
3Dropping filesDrag photographs, files or a folder over an open gallery and the whole page becomes the drop: a frosted curtain with three blue marks for what can land — a photograph, files, a folder — and Receiving in blue until you let go. The upload card at the head of the grid is the same size at every grid size, and its blue disc stays blue whatever accent your studio uses: the disc is a state, not a signature.
4A gallery from its cardOn the Galleries page every card has a ⋯ menu (bottom-right of a Magazine tile beside the eye and the arrow, bottom-left of a Card beside Preview, the end of an Index row, the right edge of a Stack card). Download in it saves the whole gallery at full quality — the originals you uploaded, never the web proxies — as one archive named after the gallery, each sub-gallery a folder inside it, in ONE archive up to 3 GB in Safari and 2 GB in Chrome, Edge, Arc and Firefox (the most each browser will save as a single file); only beyond that is it split into parts, each named “part 1 of 2” so you can see you have everything. Pick several galleries (⌘-click, right-click, or Select) and the bar at the foot offers Download N: one archive per gallery, made one after another, so each lands as its own file. Your browser may ask once whether to allow several downloads; say yes.
5The download cardWhatever you download — one photograph, a set, a gallery, five galleries — appears on one card in the bottom-right corner of the window: the frame or the cover at its own ratio, the name, how many have arrived and how big, a blue line along the foot that fills as it goes, and × to stop. When a bar runs along the foot of the window beneath it, the card rises to stand just above the bar. Several galleries queue beneath it, and any of them can be skipped before its turn. In the Showroom, pick frames and press Download N: one frame saves as itself, several as one archive of the originals. When a file is saved the card says Saved with the final size and leaves on its own; if something could not be fetched it says so and stays until you dismiss it. The card follows you from the Galleries page into a gallery and back, so a long download never needs you to wait on one screen.
6The client's whole galleryA presentation delivery carries one ask for the client: Download the gallery. On a computer it is the small pill at the bottom-left of the page, the partner of the progress dial on the right; it arrives as a disc once the banner has settled and unfolds into words as they begin to scroll. On a phone it is set into the page instead, above the first photograph and again at the end, before the studio's signature. It zips every photograph in the browser, in parts if the delivery is large, at the size your Downloads option allows, and each download is counted on the gallery and in Recent activity. It appears on the client's link and in Preview, never on the Design Studio's stage. A single photograph can be taken on its own: from the disc on its frame in the grid, or from the arrow in the viewer's pill once it is open (the D key does the same).

What a client can download is set by the gallery's Downloads option. Choose No downloads and the ask is not shown at all.

See a photo's details and EXIF

Open the info sheet for camera, lens, exposure, and file details.

1Open Info & metadataFrom a photo's ⋯ menu, choose Info & metadata.
2Read the detailsSee the camera and lens, exposure (focal length, aperture, ISO, shutter), and file details, read from the photo's EXIF.

You control whether clients see filename, file size, and EXIF in the gallery's settings.

Set a gallery's header and its banner

Two pictures: the header of the gallery you work in, and the banner your client is delivered.

1The header of the gallery you work inFrom a photo's ⋯ menu, choose Set as header. That photograph leads the gallery inside dropa — the strip across the top of the gallery, and, in a coworking gallery, the same strip your client works under.
2The banner your client is deliveredThat one is chosen in the Design Studio: click the banner on the stage and pick the photograph for it. Multi-image looks offer a slot for each frame. The two are separate decisions — choosing a banner never changes the header of the gallery you work in, and setting a header never changes what is delivered.
3Say what each one keepsA banner is a fixed strip, so it can only hold part of a photograph. Reframe opens the whole picture with the strip drawn over it: drag to anchor it — or nudge with the arrow keys — and Save banner. Centre it puts the anchor back. Where a photograph is already the strip's shape there is nothing to move, and it says so. The gallery header is reframed from Reframe on the header itself; the delivered banner from Reframe in its picker, since each is a different picture in a different frame.
4Who sees whatYour client is shown the design's banner on their link and in Preview, framed as you anchored it. In a coworking gallery they share the header of the room with you. Either way the handles are yours: no client is offered one.

Rounds of retouching — versions of a frame

Add a retouched file as a new version of the same frame; every round stays, with what changed, and anyone can compare them on the stage.

1Add a versionOpen the frame and go to Versions in the panel, or simply drop the retouched file onto the photograph. It does not need the same filename — you dropped it on this frame, so it is a version of this frame. Say what changed in a sentence; it travels with the round, in the activity and in the email. The new round becomes the current frame; every earlier round stays; approval resets so the client looks again.
2When it looks like a roundDrag a retouched file into the gallery the ordinary way, under any name, and dropa looks at it: if it looks like a frame already here, a card asks “Is this a new round of that frame?” and says what each answer leaves behind. Next version keeps ONE frame: it shows the newer file, the earlier one waits under its Versions tab to compare or go back to, and the client sees only the newest. Keep both leaves two separate photographs. It only suggests — two different shots that happen to look alike (a burst, two screenshots of the same page) are not versions, and you decide. A file with the same name as a frame asks the same way it always has.
3Read the roundsVersions lists them newest first: v3 · Current, who made it and when, what changed, what it answered (the notes left on the round before) and what it got (the notes left on it). The original closes the list. The tile and the filmstrip carry a small v3 once a frame has more than one. In Activity, a strip at the head — All rounds · v3 · v2 · v1 — reads the comments and voice notes one round at a time, so the brief for a round is one block.
4CompareCompare with the round before, or any two from the plate beneath the stage — it takes the toolbar's place, never the picture's. Three ways, as glyphs: Wipe drags a seam across the two (only the seam moves, never the picture); Split sets them side by side; Flick shows one or the other — hold F to see the other, let go to come back — which is the honest test for a skin pass. Zoom and pan work on the pair together. Esc leaves.
5RestoreRestore brings an earlier round back as the next version — v2 comes back as v4 — with its own line in the history. Nothing is ever overwritten or deleted.
6Who can do whatThe studio and its editors add and restore. Clients see the rounds, compare them, and download each one where the gallery allows downloads. Everyone on the gallery is told when a round lands, with the sentence that came with it, unless you switch that off on the sheet.

Put the tools on the left

A rail on the left for filter, arrangement, view and sets — the floating bar stays.

1Turn it onIn a gallery, open View options (the button with the sort-arrows glyph at the right of the toolbar) and switch on Tools on the left. The horizontal strip leaves and a rail appears down the left: the gallery's cover and name at its head, then Search content, and four plates — Filter, Arrangement, View and Sets. The floating bar at the bottom stays exactly where it is: it moves you through the gallery; the rail works the photographs. Nothing appears in both. People stay on the banner.
2What each plate doesFilter shows only the frames marked a certain way — every flag with its count, Liked, Commented, Approved, and the stars. Arrangement is the running order and how it is grouped, with the order lock beside the direction. View is how big the frames are, whether they show whole or square, and Asset details. Sets are the selections people keep, grouped by whose they are: Select, All and + Set are set in the plate itself.
3Search contentFocus the search and the rail offers what this gallery has — its measured colours, its scenes, what is popular in it. Type and the grid narrows as you go; the head says how many are showing. Search is the studio's instrument; a client's rail does not carry it.
4Fold itThe thin bar on the rail's edge is its handle, like the palette drawer's: tap to fold or open, or drag and the rail follows your hand and lands on the nearer side; it turns blue while the rail is parked shut. [ does the same. Folded, a blue bead marks a glyph with something on behind it, and hovering a glyph opens the whole plate beside it.
5Put it backBack to the toolbar, at the foot of the rail, returns the tools to the horizontal strip. The choice is remembered on this computer. Clients get the same rail in a coworking gallery, with what their gallery allows; a phone keeps the toolbar.

Jump to another gallery

⌘G opens the room of all your galleries over the one you are in; it unfolds from where you are.

1Open the roomPress ⌘G (Ctrl+G on Windows) anywhere in a gallery, or use Galleries at the top right. Every gallery appears as a card over the one you are in, the current one marked and ringed.
2How it opensThe galleries come up around the one you are in, nearest first — so your eye starts where you are and the room unfolds outward; each name settles under its picture a beat later. The covers are ready before you ever open it, so nothing arrives late.
3A second lookRest on a card and it shows the next picture in that gallery, the way the Galleries page does — so you can tell two similar rooms apart before you go.
4Choose oneClick a card to go there, or just start typing: the letters narrow the room to the galleries whose names match (the others recede), the arrow keys walk the matches, and Enter opens the first. Esc clears the letters; Esc again, ⌘G, or a click outside closes the room.

Reorder photos in a gallery

Drag tiles into the order you want. It sticks.

1Drag to reorderPick a tile up and carry it — the photograph travels with your hand as a small print, its number on it — and the other tiles make room as you go, and the tile’s own place travels with you as a blue-ringed hole, so you see the order you are about to make. Let go and the tile snaps home; let go anywhere else and everything glides back.
2It locks to your orderOnce you reorder, the gallery keeps your custom order rather than reverting to a default sort.
3Hold it for everyoneThe padlock at the end of the sort controls locks the running order for everyone, clients included. It turns blue when the order is held, the sort and reverse controls go quiet, and a message confirms it with an Undo (⌘Z). Clients see the blue padlock as a reading, not a switch. Click it again to free the order.

Copies of the same photograph

dropa skips a copy on the way in, and ⋯ → Remove copies… finds the ones already there.

On the way in, every file is fingerprinted before anything uploads. A copy inside the same drop (the same export twice in a folder) is skipped. Files whose bytes are already in this gallery are shown to you first — each ticked to skip, or unticked to add again as a second frame on the same stored photograph (no extra storage) — and nothing uploads until you answer. A file already elsewhere in your library is linked in without uploading. A file with the same name but different pixels asks whether it is a new version. When the drop finishes, one line says what happened — how many were added, added again, linked, or already here — and if any file did not upload, how many, so you can try those again.

For copies that are already there, open the gallery's ⋯ menu and choose Remove copies…. dropa reads the whole gallery and groups the same photograph: the same file, the same stored photograph, or — for older uploads — the same name, size and dimensions. The first of each group stays; the rest come ticked. Below them, pairs that only look the same (a second export of the same picture, judged by the photograph itself) are shown with how alike they are, unticked — those are yours to decide.

Move to the Bin sends the ticked ones to the Bin, where they keep for 30 days and can be brought back.

Finding & organising

Search everything, tag with AI, and the Bin.

Search across everything

One search finds galleries, photos, clients, folios, and runs actions.

1Open the searchPress ⌘K (Ctrl K on Windows), or click the Search bar in the top bar. This is the command center.
2Type what you're afterFind galleries, photos, clients, and folios, or run an action like New gallery. Press Tab on a result for more actions.
3Or use your voicePress ⌥M to open search already listening, and describe what you're looking for.
4Read the resultsWhen the results are photos, a line above the grid says how many photographs in how many galleries, and lists the galleries with their counts. Tap a gallery to see only its frames (tap again to release), and use Select all · N to pick everything shown. Frames found by meaning rather than by name carry a ✦.
5Act on what you foundWhen the results are photos, ⌘-click to pick several (⇧ for a run, ⌘A for all that are loaded) and press Tab: every verb applies to the lot — Download as one zip, even across galleries; Approve, Reject, portfolio, 5★; Add to folio; Move or Copy to another gallery or sub-gallery (each target shows a folder, a sub-gallery's set a step in); Add to a set when they share a gallery. With one photo the same list adds Open (the frame in its gallery workspace, viewer up — Enter does the same), Quick view (a viewer right here, without leaving the search), Info (the photograph's spec sheet) and Find similar. Tab on a hovered photo outlines it in blue so you always know which one the verbs are about. While the search is open the keys are its own — ⌘A picks the results, never the page behind — and Esc steps back one layer at a time: picker, then verbs, then the selection, then the search itself.

Voice search runs in your browser and is free. Inside a gallery and the Showroom there are also focused searches over just those photos.

Search by what's in the photo

Describe a scene and dropa finds matching photos, not just filenames.

In the command center or the Showroom, type what is in the picture (for example a red dress or a marble staircase) and dropa ranks photos by how well they match, not just by name.

It works in both English and Spanish. Keyword matches on names and tags always rank first, then visual matches fill in.

This is free for your clients. For you, each search costs a tiny fraction of a cent to run, and the guided walkthroughs and keyword search cost nothing.

Find similar photos

Pick a photo and dropa surfaces visually similar shots.

1Open the command centerPress ⌘K and find the photo, or start from a photo's actions.
2Choose Find similarUse Find similar to pull up photos that look like it across your archive.

Tag photos with AI

Let dropa describe your photos so search finds them.

1Tag from the ShowroomOpen the Showroom. When there are untagged photos, a Tag button appears. Click it to tag them and watch the progress.
2Automatic taggingPhotos also get tagged on their own at key moments, like when a client approves one or you add it to your Portfolio or a Folio.

AI tagging uses a paid model and costs you roughly a cent per photo, once. You can turn it off in Settings under Privacy.

Delete photos and the Bin

Deleted photos rest in the Bin for 30 days before they're gone.

1Delete the photosChoose Delete from a photo's ⋯ menu, or select several and delete them together.
2They move to the BinDeleted photos leave the client view, the Showroom, and every share link straight away, but they are kept in the Bin.
3Restore within 30 daysOpen the Bin in the sidebar to restore anything for up to 30 days. After that they are cleared automatically.

Empty Bin removes items for good. That is the one action that cannot be undone.

Clients, jobs & calendar

Your roster, bundled delivery, and shoot dates.

Add a client

Keep a simple roster of who you shoot for.

1Open ClientsGo to the Clients tab and click New client.
2Fill in their detailsAdd a name (required), and optionally a company and email.

A client record is a light label you attach work to. Their jobs and galleries live under them.

Bundle galleries into a job

A job groups galleries behind one delivery link.

1Create a jobOn a client's row in the Clients tab, click + Job. Name it and pick the galleries to include, plus an optional shoot date and deadline.
2Deliver itUse Deliver all to mark the job delivered and set its galleries live. Copy link gives you one link that opens all of them.

Schedule shoots on the calendar

See shoots and deadlines on a month view, and jot day notes.

1Open the CalendarGo to the Calendar tab. Shoots, deadlines, and notes show on the month grid.
2Add a shoot dateDouble-click a day, or use + Schedule, or the Create dock's New shoot date. This opens a job pre-set to that day.
3Jot a day noteSelect a day and add a free-text note for anything that isn't a job.

Shoot dates and deadlines come from your jobs, so scheduling a shoot creates a job you can fill in later.

Collecting files (Inbox)

Let people send you photos at a link.

What the Inbox is for

A link where people can send you files, straight into a review queue.

The Inbox is for collecting files from other people, not for messages. You share a link (or a QR code), someone uploads their files, and their submission lands in a review queue for you.

You get a default Public inbox automatically, and you can create more focused ones for specific senders or shoots.

Create an intake inbox

Set a link, ask for the details you need, and share a QR code.

1Make a new inboxIn the Inbox tab, click New custom inbox and give it a name.
2Ask for what you needTurn on sender name, email, or a message, and add your own fields (text, email, phone, date, or a dropdown). You can add a consent checkbox and a deadline.
3Share the link or QRCopy the inbox link, or show its QR code for on-set intake. You can regenerate the address any time to invalidate the old one.

Review and file submissions

Accept into a gallery, dismiss, or archive each submission.

1Look through the filesEach submission in the Inbox tab shows its files as a contact sheet at their own proportions. Hover a picture for the × to drop it, or click it to open the viewer: arrow keys move, D drops or keeps the picture, and the pill at the foot shows where you are and how many are left.
2Accept and fileUse Accept and file, then choose an existing gallery or a new one. Only kept files move into that gallery; dropped ones are left behind.
3Or dismiss / archiveDismiss asks once, on the button itself, then permanently removes the submission's files. Archive clears it from the queue without filing.

Turn on Auto-file on an inbox to skip the queue and drop each delivery straight into a new gallery.

What the sender sees

One page in your name: the drop card, a short cover note set on the page, a 1·2·3 at the edge, and a colophon of what happens next.

The link opens a page under your name — your logo (or your initial) and the inbox in a small frosted bar at the top, with a light/dark switch beside it. The title, your welcome line and everything under them sit flush left on one column, in the app's own face. The sender drops files on the one card on the page (the same lime-and-grid paper you drop onto in the app), or clicks Add files; on a computer, Add a folder takes a whole folder at once. The card says the real limits: RAW and every other format, up to 2 GB a file, 500 files in one send.

As files land, the count on the card fills in, a tray at the right edge stacks the latest ones, and a contact sheet below shows every photograph at its own proportions — sharp corners, nothing cropped, nothing boxed. While the files travel, the card becomes the same upload readout your gallery tile shows — the percentage, the file count, the meter. A white glass 1 · 2 · 3 lives off the left edge behind a thin handle; it slides in when the pointer reaches the handle (and for a moment on its own when the step changes), and each number names its step under the pointer: Add your files, Write a short note, Send. The note is a run of hairline fields — name, email, a message, and any fields you set; Confirm & send fills with a progress bar as the files travel.

Under the fold a four-part colophon answers what a sender usually wonders: what happens next, the deadline if you set one, that nothing is public, and how to reach you — the contact email and website from Settings. dropa's small tile sits at the foot.

A closed inbox and a password-protected one open on the same page, one column in the middle — Closed, with a Write to you button, or Protected inbox, with the password field. A picture the browser cannot preview (TIFF, HEIC, RAW) still goes up — as the original, shown as a document on the sheet.

Studio setup & tools

Branding, looks, image quality, and editor export.

Your team, and where each person may work

A role says what a person may do; a scope says where. Name the galleries — a parent brings its sub-galleries — and everything else is out of sight, in the search too.

1RoleOwner, admin, editor, commenter. It says what a person may do — judge, retouch, deliver, run the studio.
2ScopeIn Settings → Team, narrow a member to named galleries. Naming a gallery names everything inside it, including sub-galleries made later. Left empty, a member sees the whole studio.
3It holds everywhereA narrowed member's galleries, counts, activity and bin are only their rooms — and so is the search: ⌘K's results, the galleries it lists, and the Move, Copy and Set pickers show only what is within their reach. It is enforced where the data lives, not by hiding buttons: a frame outside their rooms cannot be moved, copied, starred, commented on or binned by anyone who knows its address.
4The ownerThe owner is never narrowed — somebody has to be able to see the whole studio.

The weather, and where dropa thinks you are

Four sources, in order of truth, and the line says which one it used. A guess is marked ≈ and takes one tap to correct.

1What you seeA plain city name means dropa knows: either you typed it, or your device told it. A city with ≈ before it is read from your internet connection — an ISP's registered city, or a privacy relay's — which can be a long way from where you sit. dropa never shows a hardcoded default.
2Set it onceTap the city and type yours; it is remembered on this computer. Or hover the widget and tap the pin: your browser asks once for your location, dropa keeps the answer for a day and paints your real city, plain, with a small green bead on the pin.
3If the pin does nothingThen location is switched off somewhere, and the widget says which switch under the temperature. Two are possible: the browser's own website setting (in Safari: Settings ▸ Websites ▸ Location; in Chrome: the lock in the address bar), or the computer's — on a Mac, System Settings ▸ Privacy & Security ▸ Location Services, where Safari or Chrome must be ticked. Allow it and tap the pin again, or simply type your city. Once allowed, dropa re-reads your position every time you open the studio, so a trip shows the new city by itself.
4When it asksIf nothing trustworthy is available — for instance the connection says one continent and your computer's clock says another — the widget shows Set your city rather than guessing.
5PrivacyYour position never leaves your browser except to fetch the forecast for those coordinates. The connection-level reading comes from dropa's own edge, not a third-party lookup.

Set your branding

Upload your logo and wallpaper, and optionally remove dropa branding.

1Open BrandingGo to Settings, then Branding under Studio.
2Add your logo and wallpaperUpload your logo and a wallpaper, and add your social links.
3Optionally go white-labelTurn on Remove dropa branding to present the client experience as fully your own.

Your logo shows in the client gallery, the delivery header, your sidebar, and the public upload page. Every client gallery also closes with your sign-off: a contact sheet of every frame in the gallery (numbered, drifting slowly — the client can drag or scroll it, and tap a frame to open it), your contact details in columns, and your studio's name set across the full width of the page. Whatever you fill in under Studio details and social links is what appears there.

Design the client presentation

Pick a look, fonts, colours, and banners for a gallery's presentation.

1Open the Design tabInside a gallery, open the Design tab to open the Design Studio.
2Choose the arrangementUnder The Look, Arrangement decides how the photographs lie on the page: Rows (justified rows, the default), Columns, Sorted (landscapes together, portraits together), Sheet (a contact sheet, every frame fitted whole inside its cell), Editorial (a magazine spread with air), Scattered (one or two large frames a band) or Single (one photograph per screen). Every arrangement shows every photograph whole — nothing is cropped to fit a cell. Size is five stops that say how many frames sit across the page — Intimate five, Small four, Medium three, Large two, Grand one and a bit — and Spacing five stops of air between them. Each is a bar you fill: press anywhere along it, or drag and the page changes as you cross each stop, then settles on the nearest when you let go; the arrow keys step. Switch the stage to the phone and the same two stops set the phone’s own size and spacing. Arrival chooses how frames come onto the page as the client reads — Print (simply there), Settle, Develop, Breathe (the picture eases out to its full view inside its frame), Cinema (focus and breathe together, a beat apart across the grid), Uncover, Depth (the picture moves a little slower than the page, like a window), Focus, Colour or Drift; a phone keeps to the ones that are light on it. Balance the order re-sequences the photographs so orientations alternate, tones vary and featured frames keep their distance — the button answers in blue for a beat, Order balanced (or Already balanced), and ⌘Z takes it back. On the stage itself, drag a frame to move it, and the chip in its corner makes it large, then full width.
3Shape the lookEvery look is shown as a small preview of its own banner — pick the composition you want, then set the title and body typefaces (with suggested pairings), fill the weight and slant bars (press or drag along them; a double press stands the title upright), pick a body pairing from the tray, and choose the shape, case, presentation colours and banner images. Click any line of text on the banner — the title included — to rewrite or restyle it: voice, size, weight, colour and opacity, previewed live. Drag a line to move it. Controls that carry real consequence explain themselves — hover the ? beside a label. Saved looks can be renamed, and deleting one asks first. When you choose a colour, dropa measures it against the ground behind it and says whether it can actually be read, with a one-tap fix when it cannot.
4Read the colour out of your photographsIn Colour, From your photographs reads a palette out of the gallery itself, the whole gallery or up to three frames you point at, and proposes a few finished palettes on a sheet over the stage. Rest on a palette to try it on the gallery; the sheet stays where it is. Click one to keep it, and the sheet folds to a small pill at the foot of the stage so you can see the gallery wearing it; the pill's discs try the others on rest and keep on a click, and resting on the pill opens the sheet again. Once read, the rail lists every palette as a row under a head that says what was read: rest on a row to try it, click to keep it, and the kept one carries a blue mark. The head opens the sheet again.
5Five chaptersThe rail is five chapters in the order a design is made: Look, Arrangement, Colour, Type and Banner. One is open at a time, and dropa remembers which on your computer. A folded chapter still says where it stands in a line on its header, the look's name, the arrangement and its size and spacing, the colour scheme and its contrast, the title face and weight, whether a banner is chosen, so the whole design reads at a glance without scrolling. Press a header, or its small disc, to open it; the others fold. The thin rule at the rail's edge shows your place only while the rail moves.
6Undo and redoEvery change in the studio is a step you can walk back: press ⌘Z to undo and ⇧⌘Z to redo, or use the two arrows at the left of the bar at the foot of the stage. Resting on an arrow names the step it would reverse, Undo look · Maison, so you know before you press. A slider dragged or stepped in one go is one step, so undo returns it to where it stood, not one notch back. Moving, featuring and balancing frames on the stage are steps too. The arrows grey when there is nothing to do. The history is kept for as long as the browser tab lives: leave the studio, come back, even reload, and everything done in this session can still be walked back.
7Sequence the frames on one sheetUnder Arrangement, Sequence the frames opens a card over the stage that holds every frame small and whole, in the gallery's order, so a long gallery can be re-sequenced without moving large pictures about. The card lays the frames out as the stage does, in the arrangement you chose, so you can picture the gallery. Drag a frame and the others make way; the frame's place snaps to wherever the hand is, gaps included, and holds; near the card's top or bottom the sheet scrolls under a held frame, so a frame can travel from the first row to the last. Let go anywhere and it stays. The stage and the client's delivery follow at once, and ⌘Z takes it back. Balance the order lives on the card too. Done, Escape, or a press outside folds the card back into its key. The whole gallery fits the card to begin with; − and + in its head (or + − on the keys, or a pinch on the trackpad) bring the thumbnails closer, and Fit or 0 returns to the whole gallery.
8The bar catches the lightThe bar at the foot of the stage is glass along its top edge. Whatever passes beneath it as you scroll, a photograph, the paper, lights that edge in its own colour, the way a tab bar does on a phone. A dark photograph gives no light; a red one lights the rim red. Nothing to set.
9Good to knowThe rail ends with a small card of four lines that say the stage's gestures out loud: drag to reorder, feature a frame from its corner chip, step back with ⌘Z, and try a palette or a face by hovering before you click to keep it. Press Hide and the card folds to its one line and stays folded on your computer; press Show to bring the lines back.
10Desktop and phoneAt the top of the rail a small switch shows the two devices: a raised tile sits under the one you are designing and glides across when you press the other, and resting on either names it. On the phone the board sits inside a handset, a dark bezel with the corner of a real phone, so what you see is what a client holds. The phone keeps its own size and spacing; the desktop is never changed by it.
11Draft, then Make liveEverything you do in the studio is a draft, and the draft is always saved: close the tab and it is there next week. Preview shows the draft. Your client sees the live design. The first time you open the studio, the design as it stands becomes the live one, so nothing changes for anyone. From then on, change something and the button reads Make live while the client keeps the last live version; press it and they see exactly this. Discard changes in the rail returns the draft to what is live. Making a design live is not sending it: Send, in Share, is what gives someone the link.

Save settings as a preset

Save a set of gallery settings or a look, then apply it to new galleries.

When you create a gallery you can save its settings as a preset, and apply a saved preset to a new gallery to start from your usual setup.

In the Design Studio, Save this look, beside My looks in the rail, keeps the whole design — composition, typefaces, colours — under a name you choose. It joins My looks in the rail, where you can apply, rename or delete it.

Optimise image quality and size

Choose a quality preset and optimise your existing library.

1Open Image QualityGo to Settings, then Image Quality under Studio.
2Pick a presetChoose Balanced or Max fidelity for how your images are prepared.
3Optimise your libraryRun Optimize existing library to prepare fast-loading versions of older photos. You can stop it or restore originals at any time.

Send edits to Lightroom or Capture One

Install the plug-in and export the selections as a sidecar.

1Get the plug-inGo to Settings, then Lightroom + Capture One under Studio, and download the plug-in for your editor.
2Export the selectionsFrom a gallery, export the client's picks as an XMP sidecar, then bring it into your editor with the plug-in.

Whose name a gallery wears

Pick a brand per gallery; it signs the door, the sign-off, the contact sheet and the email.

A gallery wears one identity: your studio's own, or one of your brands. A brand is a whole kit, not a logo file: its name, logo, website, channels and accent, kept under Settings, Brands.

Choose it per gallery under Settings, General, Brand. From then on every place a client sees you signs with that brand: the door, the sign-off at the foot of the gallery, the printed contact sheet, and the delivery email's name. Nothing is borrowed from the studio, so a brand without a website shows no website.

The choice waits for Save like the rest of Settings. Pick your studio's own name to take a gallery back.

Account, storage & bin

Theme, storage, notifications, and restoring.

Change the theme and accent

Toggle light or dark, and pick your accent colour.

Open your account menu from the sidebar avatar. Use the theme toggle to switch between light and dark (it follows your system by default).

The switch is a light being turned on or off: the new scheme comes up from the control you pressed and settles across the page in under a second, wherever you are in dropa. If your system prefers reduced motion, it changes at once.

Next to it, the accent control lets you pick your accent colour, which is used for active states across the app.

The overview's light

Four skies — dawn, daylight, golden hour and night — picked by hand, or left to follow the sun.

The overview opens under one of four skies: dawn, daylight, golden hour and night. The small switch under the weather picks one, and it stays until you change it. At rest the switch shows only the stop in effect; move over it and it unfolds into all of them, stays open while your pointer is on it, and folds away when you leave. The pin at the row’s far left keeps the whole row on the page instead, if you would rather always see it.

The last stop on that switch, marked A, lets the sky follow the sun instead. Dropa works out sunrise and sunset for the place the weather widget is showing and moves through the four skies at the right moments — a real dawn in the morning, the golden hour before sunset, night after it — wherever you are in the world, in any season. The label reads “by the sun” while this is on.

Picking any sky by hand switches the sun off again and keeps your choice. Either way, it is a studio setting: it follows you across devices.

The very last stop, the empty ring, is Paper: no sky at all, the page as it is in light or dark, for anyone who would rather work without the gradients. Pick any sky to bring it back.

Check your storage

A live meter shows how much of your space is used.

A storage meter shows your used space against your limit. You can see it in the sidebar and in your account menu.

It reflects the real size of your photos, so clearing the Bin frees space once items are purged.

Restore from the Bin

The Bin holds deleted items for 30 days so you can restore them.

1Open the BinOpen the Bin from the sidebar. It holds galleries and photos you have deleted.
2Pick what you want backEvery photograph keeps its own shape and colour in the Bin, and each caption says how many days it has left. The bar at the bottom of the page offers both ways in: Select, to pick frames one by one (a small ring appears on every frame), or Select all (⌘A works too). Deselect all empties your selection in one press, and Esc leaves selecting altogether. Once something is picked, the rest of the page steps back so you can see exactly what will be taken.
3Sort itThe menu above the photographs orders the Bin: Recently deleted, Clears soonest (what is about to be gone for good), Name A–Z or Z–A, or By gallery, which sets out whole galleries first and then each gallery's photographs under its name. The Bin remembers your choice.
4Restore or deleteWith frames picked, the bar offers Restore, which puts them back where they came from, and Delete forever. The note that confirms it shows the photographs it was about. Empty Bin, top right, removes everything for good and cannot be undone.

Your notifications

What your clients did: galleries opened, files taken, approvals, selections, comments and new submissions.

Open the notifications panel from the bell in the sidebar to see what your clients did: a gallery opened, files downloaded, frames approved or rejected, a selection submitted, a comment or an @mention, and new inbox submissions. Mentions gathers the notes; Following gathers what happened on the galleries you watch.

Your own doing is never news to you: notes and approvals you make yourself do not ring the bell, and a download of nothing is not an event.

Opening the panel marks everything as seen, so the unread pip clears.

Turn AI features on or off

A single toggle controls AI tagging in your Privacy settings.

1Open PrivacyGo to Settings, then Privacy under Account.
2Toggle AI taggingTurn AI tagging on or off. With it off, photos are not sent for automatic tagging.

Semantic search still works from any tags and descriptions already saved.

Troubleshooting

When something isn't working the way you expect.

I can't sign in

dropa is passwordless. You sign in with a magic link sent to your email.

dropa has no account password to remember or recover. To sign in, enter your email on the sign-in page and we send you a magic link. Open the link from your inbox and you're in.

If the link hasn't arrived, wait a minute, check your spam or junk folder, and make sure you used the same email as your studio. Then request a fresh link.

Each link is single-use and expires after a short while, so always open the most recent one.

This is about your studio login. A password you set on a gallery is a different thing, see recovering a gallery password.

I forgot a gallery's password

It's shown in the gallery's settings, where you can also generate a new one.

1Open the gallery settingsGo into the gallery, open Settings, and go to the Security tab.
2Read or change itThe current password is shown there. You can edit it, click Generate for a new one, or switch Password off entirely.
3Re-share itIf you changed it, send the client the new password along with the link.

My client can't open the gallery

Usually it's access level, an expiry date, or a missing password.

Open the gallery's Settings, Security tab, and check three things.

Access level: if it's set to Private, the link won't open for anyone. Set it to Public to share it.

Expiration: if you set an expiry date that has passed, the link stops working. Clear or extend it.

Password or access code: if you set one, the client needs it. Send it alongside the link, and confirm they're using the current link.

My upload seems stuck

Photos upload in the background. Large files just take longer.

Uploads continue in the background, and large, high-resolution files take longer, so give it a moment.

Keep the tab open while it finishes. If a single file seems stuck, try removing and re-adding just that one, and check your internet connection.

My client can't download

Downloads are off unless you allow them for that gallery.

1Open the gallery settingsInside the gallery, open Settings and go to the General tab.
2Allow downloadsSet the Downloads option to Low-res, High-res, or Both. That turns on the download option for your client.

The photos look soft or low quality

Galleries show optimised proofs for speed. The download is full quality.

What a client views in a gallery is an optimised proof, sized to load fast. When downloads are allowed, the file they download is the full-resolution original.

If the proofs look softer than you'd like, check your Image Quality setting under Settings and re-optimise your library on the Max fidelity preset.

Still can’t find it?

Reach out and a real person will get back to you.

How dropa works.