How to send RAW photos to clients, and let them see what they got

Why RAW files are the hardest thing a photographer sends

A RAW file is everything the sensor recorded, before any decisions about white balance, sharpening, or how much to rescue from the shadows. That is exactly why clients who edit, retouchers, and agencies want them. It is also why they are a pain to hand over.

• They are big. A single frame from a modern body is 25 to 60 MB, so a one hour shoot of a few hundred frames runs to several gigabytes. That is a folder, not an attachment, and well past what any email provider allows.
• Nothing opens them by default. A client without Lightroom, Capture One, or the camera maker's own software double clicks a CR2 and gets a shrug from their operating system.
• Sharing tools show them as icons. Transfer services and cloud drives build thumbnails for JPEGs and leave RAW files as a generic file symbol, so a gallery of a hundred frames looks like a hundred copies of the same tile.

The result is a delivery the client cannot judge. They download everything to find the three frames they asked about, or they email you to ask which file is which, and the handoff that should have taken a minute takes an afternoon.

Every RAW file already carries a picture of itself

Here is the part most people never learn. When you press the shutter, the camera saves the sensor data and, tucked inside the same file, a finished JPEG of the shot. That JPEG is what you see on the back of the camera when you review a frame. It is how the LCD can show you the image instantly without processing anything.

Most software ignores it. Your operating system does not go looking for it, and neither do most transfer tools, which is why the file shows up as a blank icon. But the picture is there, in every Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, and medium format file, waiting for something to read it.

What a ZappFiles download page now shows for RAW files

When you upload RAW files to ZappFiles, we pull that camera made picture out of each one and turn it into a thumbnail on the download page. Your client sees the shoot as a grid of frames, opens any of them larger, ticks the ones they want, and downloads only those or the whole set as one zip. The RAW file itself is never touched or converted. What they download is exactly what came off your card.

Because the preview is the JPEG your camera made at capture, it shows the frame as the camera rendered it. If you have since edited the file in Lightroom, the preview will not reflect that edit, but it will always be the right frame, which is what matters for finding it.

Older and rarer formats from Epson, Minolta, Kodak, and Mamiya are covered too. The same update brought real previews to PDFs, Illustrator files, and EPS artwork, so a photographer who also sends a print ready PDF proof or an album layout gets a page where every tile is a picture. The full list of what previews and what gets an icon lives in the file previews guide.

Why a preview changes how the delivery feels

• The client can check the shoot before committing to a multi gigabyte download. On a hotel Wi-Fi connection that is the difference between looking now and looking tomorrow.
• Selects stop being a conversation. Instead of "the one where she's laughing, third from the end I think", they tick IMG_6284 and IMG_6291 and download two files.
• Mistakes surface early. If the wrong folder went up, or the frames are from the previous session, you both see it on the page rather than after a two hour download.
• It looks like your work. A wall of thumbnails on a page with your logo reads as a delivery. A list of grey icons reads as an attachment. Which one you want under your studio name is not a hard call.

One folder in, the photos straight away

Most RAW deliveries start the same way: you drag one folder off the card or out of your catalog and drop it on the uploader. We keep that folder, because the client should get the same structure back when they unzip. But a download page that shows a single folder tile and makes the client click it before seeing a single photo is one step too many.

So when a transfer is exactly one folder and nothing else, the download page opens inside it. Your client lands on the frames. Subfolders, if you have them, still show as folders, and the zip still contains the folder name you gave it. How folders travel through a transfer is covered in the folder support guide, and if you want a structure worth keeping, start with how to organize client project files before you send them.

How to send a RAW shoot so it lands well

• Send the folder, not loose files. Name it with the client and the date, since that name is what they will see in the zip.
• Give the transfer a title a human would write. "Photoshoot May 16, unedited" tells the client what they are looking at before they open a single frame.
• Pick an expiry that matches the job. A quick selects round can live for two weeks. A full archive handoff to an agency deserves a link that lasts a year.
• Wait a couple of minutes before sharing the link if the client is waiting on the other end. Thumbnails for RAW files are rendered on our side after the upload finishes, and a big shoot takes a moment.
• Check the download page yourself after the client has had it a day. You can see whether they opened it and what they took, without asking, as described in how to know if your client actually downloaded your files.

On size: a transfer without an account carries 3 GB, a free account 5 GB, Pro 50 GB, and Max 250 GB, with links that live from 10 days up to a full year depending on plan. A 2.3 GB shoot of ninety CR2 files fits in the free tier with room to spare. The per plan breakdown is in the file size limits guide, and the photographer specific setup is on the photographers page.