You sent your client a proofing gallery. They spent an evening hearting their favourite photos. And now something's broken: either they're telling you their favourites disappeared, or you're staring at your dashboard and their selections just aren't there.
This is one of the most common support issues across every client proofing tool, whether you use Pixieset, ShootProof, Pic-Time, CloudSpot, or anything else. The good news is that the cause is almost always one of a handful of things, and most of them are fixable in a couple of minutes. Here's how to work through them, roughly in order of how often they're the culprit.
1. Your client never actually submitted their favourites
This is the number one cause, and it's not your client's fault. Most proofing tools have a two-step selection process: the client hearts or stars photos, and then they have to click a separate "Submit," "Send Favorites," or "Share Your Favorites" button to actually send those selections to you.
Many clients heart 150 photos, feel done, and close the tab. The favourites exist in some form, but you never get notified and, depending on the tool, you may not see them at all.
The fix: Message your client and ask them to open the gallery, go to their favourites view, and look for a submit or send button. In ShootProof, for example, clients click Favorites in the top navigation, then Send Favorites. Other tools have similar flows. If your tool lets you see in-progress favourites before submission (many do, through a visitor or activity report), check there first before asking the client to redo anything.
2. The client favourited photos under a different email or session
Most proofing tools track favourites per visitor, usually identified by email address. This creates several ways for selections to fragment or vanish:
Your client started on their phone and continued on their laptop, entering a different email each time. Now their favourites are split across two visitor records, and you're only looking at one of them.
Your client's partner or parent also went through the gallery and favourited photos under their own email. You're looking at the wrong visitor's list.
Your client typed their email with a typo the second time. Two visitor records again.
The fix: Check your gallery's visitor report and look at every visitor, not just the one you expect. If favourites are split across sessions, ask your client which email they used, or simply combine the lists yourself.
3. Browser issues on the client's side
If your client says "I hearted the photos but when I came back they were gone," the usual suspects are browser-side:
Private or incognito browsing. If the tool stores anonymous favourites in the browser before the client identifies themselves, private mode wipes them the moment the window closes.
Cookies cleared or blocked. Same effect. Some corporate networks and privacy browser extensions block the cookies proofing tools use to remember a visitor.
Switching devices mid-selection. Favourites saved anonymously in a phone browser won't appear on a laptop, because there's nothing linking the two sessions.
The fix: Ask your client to use a normal (non-private) browser window, accept cookies, enter their email when prompted before they start selecting, and stick to one device for the whole session. Entering an email early is the key step, because it ties the favourites to an identity instead of a browser.
4. The gallery link, PIN, or permissions changed
If you re-uploaded photos, changed the gallery password, moved photos between albums, or replaced files after your client started selecting, their favourites can be orphaned. Some tools tie a favourite to a specific photo record, and deleting and re-uploading a photo creates a new record — the favourite points at a photo that no longer exists.
Similarly, if your client is opening an old email with an outdated link, they may be looking at a stale version of the gallery or failing to reach it at all.
The fix: Avoid deleting and re-uploading photos once a client has started proofing. If you need to replace a file, use your tool's replace feature (if it has one) rather than delete-and-add. And always send the current gallery link when a client reports problems.
5. Selections exist, but they're stuck in the proofing tool
This one is less about favourites being invisible and more about them being unusable. You can see the favourites in your dashboard, but your actual editing happens in Lightroom Classic, and the selections don't exist there. You're left copying filename lists, pasting them into Lightroom's text filter, and manually flagging photos one by one.
Strictly speaking the tool is working as designed. But the practical effect is the same: the information your client gave you isn't where you need it. If your filenames contain spaces, or you renamed files after upload, the filename-matching workaround breaks too, and now your client's selections are effectively lost to your workflow even though they're sitting right there in a dashboard.
We've written detailed walkthroughs of this problem for specific tools: how to get Pixieset client selections back into Lightroom Classic and how to get ShootProof client selections back into Lightroom Classic.
Preventing the whole class of problem
A few habits eliminate most of these failures before they happen:
Tell clients what "done" looks like. When you send the gallery, include one line: "When you've picked your favourites, make sure to hit Submit so they come through to me." This alone prevents the most common failure.
Ask clients to enter their email before selecting, use one device, and avoid private browsing.
Don't restructure a gallery mid-proofing. Finish your changes before the client starts.
Check the visitor report before assuming selections are lost. They're usually there, just under an unexpected email.
How Gallerina approaches this
We built Gallerina after watching photographers lose time to exactly these failure modes, so we designed the selection flow to remove the fragile parts.
Clients access their gallery with a link and a PIN. There's no anonymous browser-storage stage where favourites can silently evaporate, and no dependence on the client typing the same email consistently across devices. Selections are saved to the project as the client makes them, so you can see progress from your dashboard in real time without waiting for a submit step you have to hope they find.
And because selections live on the project rather than in a dashboard silo, they don't get stuck at step 5 either. The GallerinaSync plugin for Lightroom Classic pulls your client's selections directly into your catalog: colour labels, star ratings, and any comments they left on individual photos, synced in seconds. No filename lists, no text filters, no manual matching. If your client changes their mind and swaps photos, you re-sync and the labels update.
If lost selections or manual matching have burned you more than once, Gallerina has a free tier that includes the Lightroom plugin. Try it on one shoot alongside your existing tools and see if the problem just goes away.