How to send RAW photos to an editor or retoucher.

The first time you outsource editing, the files become the hard part. RAW originals are 30 to 80 MB each, a wedding is two or three thousand of them, and the editor needs more than pixels: they need your picks, your reference edits, and a way to hand everything back. Most handoff pain is not about the editing at all. It is about moving heavy files in both directions without confusion. Here is a process that survives contact with real projects.

Decide what actually crosses the wire

Do not send the shoot. Send the job. A culled wedding of 700 selects at 40 MB each is 28 GB, while the full take might be four times that for no benefit to anyone. Cull first, then hand off only what will be edited.

What the editor needs, as a checklist:

• The RAW files for the selects. Renamed or not, but consistent, and organized in the folder structure you want back.
• Your look, as files not adjectives. A Lightroom catalog export with your reference edits, or a handful of finished JPGs that show the destination. Moody and warm means nothing; five example frames mean everything.
• Sidecars if you started work. If your picks and base adjustments live in XMP files, include them. If they live inside a catalog, send the catalog. Orphaned RAWs arrive with none of your intent attached.
• A one page brief. Deliverable format, crop policy, skin policy, deadline, and how to reach you with questions.

Ten minutes of packaging saves a week of clarifying emails, and it marks you as the kind of client an editor prioritizes.

Pack it so nothing gets lost or mangled

RAW files are the one photographic format you should never let anything re-encode, resize, or helpfully preview into a different file. That rules out every chat app and any route with an opinion about images. It also argues for zipping: a ZIP moves as one opaque block, keeps your folder structure, and arrives byte for byte intact or fails loudly, with no middle state where three files quietly went missing.

Structure the archive the way you want it returned. One job, one folder: RAW in one subfolder, references in another, the brief at the top level. If the job is big, split by section, ceremony, reception, portraits, so a resend after a bad connection costs one part rather than everything.

Size sanity check before you send: 700 selects at 40 MB is 28 GB, which will not fit any free transfer in one go. Three or four themed transfers of 7 to 10 GB each are easier to upload, easier to download, and easier to talk about when something needs a resend. Fashion and portrait jobs with 50 to 150 selects usually fit in a single transfer.

Send it, and know it arrived

With the archive ready, the transfer itself is the easy part. Using Kepla File Transfer:

1. Drag the job folder in. Zipping and uploading run at the same time, so a 9 GB handoff starts moving immediately. Up to 10 GB per transfer, up to 4 GB per single file, which comfortably clears any RAW or catalog file.
2. Set expiry to 3 days for a working handoff. That covers a weekend and an editor in another timezone without leaving your originals sitting on a server for weeks. When the link expires, the files are deleted.
3. Address it to the editor directly. Each recipient gets their own link, and the download receipt tells you the moment the files were actually pulled down. No more did it arrive messages: you already know.

Everything travels encrypted, nothing is recompressed, and the editor needs no account, no plugin and no client software, just a browser. If a connection drops mid download on their side, the link keeps working until expiry, so recovery is a second click rather than a second upload.

The return trip and the paper trail

Half the handoff is getting work back, and it deserves the same care. A transfer can carry a send back link, a return path baked into the delivery, so the editor can push the finished files back to you without setting anything up on their end. Ask for returns in a fixed format: edited files in the same folder structure, same base filenames, plus the catalog or sidecars if the edit lives there.

Keep the paper trail boring and complete. The brief, the transfer receipts and the return files tell the whole story of who sent what and when, which matters exactly once, on the day something is missing, and on that day it matters completely.

Last, remember the transfer is delivery, not storage. Your originals live on your own drives and backups; the link is just the courier between studios. A 3 day window, files deleted after, receipts kept, and both sides of the handoff stay clean job after job.

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