If you use CloudSpot for client galleries and Lightroom Classic for editing, you've probably hit this wall: your client favourites their picks in CloudSpot, and now you need to find those exact photos in your Lightroom catalog before you can start editing.
CloudSpot gets a lot right. The galleries are fast, the brand controls are strong, and the store and contracts side means you can run most of your client-facing business from one place. But when it comes to getting client favourites back into Lightroom Classic, there's a gap you have to bridge manually. If you're rethinking your proofing setup entirely, browse our checklist on choosing the best client proofing tools for your studio.
So how do you close the loop?
What the CloudSpot Lightroom Plugin actually does
CloudSpot is unusually upfront about this, which is worth crediting. Their own documentation describes the Lightroom connection as a one-way sync: collections and images you publish from Lightroom to CloudSpot stay linked in Lightroom, but collections you upload directly to CloudSpot won't appear in Lightroom at all.
In practice, the plugin is a publish service. You create a collection in Lightroom, drag photos into it, hit Publish, and the images land in CloudSpot. That's the whole scope. It doesn't pull favourites, selections, or client feedback back into your catalog. There's no reverse direction.
A couple of related limitations are worth knowing before you build a workflow around it. The plugin only works with Lightroom Classic, not Lightroom CC. And the connection between Lightroom and CloudSpot can drop, which is common enough that CloudSpot maintains a dedicated troubleshooting article walking you through creating a fresh collection, logging out and back in through Edit Settings, and, if that fails, removing and reinstalling the plugin entirely.
The filename copy workaround
CloudSpot does give you a way to see what your client picked. Here's the official method:
Open the collection, click Analytics in the top right (you can also reach it from the collection dashboard dropdown), and view your client's favourites list. From there you can copy the image filenames.
Then you switch to Lightroom Classic, open the Library module, and use the text filter set to Filename to pull up those images.
CloudSpot flags the critical caveat themselves: this only works if the filenames you uploaded to CloudSpot match the filenames in your Lightroom catalog. If you renamed files on import, renamed them on export, or uploaded a differently-named JPEG set, the whole method falls apart. And as with any filename-filter approach, spaces in filenames and partial matches cause problems. Search for IMG_412 and you may surface IMG_4120, IMG_4122, and IMG_4128 alongside the one you actually wanted.
The manual matching process
Whichever route you take, the underlying task is the same: you have a list of photos your client picked, and you need to mark those photos in Lightroom so you can filter down and edit only the selections. Here's what that looks like:
Step 1: Open the collection's Analytics and copy the client's favourites list.
Step 2: Open Lightroom Classic and navigate to the folder or collection for that shoot.
Step 3: Filter or search for each filename.
Step 4: Flag, colour label, or star rate each selected photo manually.
Step 5: Repeat for every selection.
For a typical wedding where the client picks 100-150 photos out of 800, this takes 20-40 minutes when the filenames cooperate. When they don't, it takes longer, and you're doing visual cross-referencing instead.
Run 30 weddings a year and you're spending 10-20 hours annually on what amounts to data entry.
Where the manual workflow breaks down
The time cost is the obvious problem. The subtler ones show up at scale.
Client changes. Your client submits their favourites, you spend half an hour matching them in Lightroom, and the next day they ask to swap four photos. Back to Lightroom, removing labels from four photos and hunting down four new ones.
Feedback stays in CloudSpot. Anything your client tells you about specific images ("crop this tighter," "can this one be black and white?") lives outside your catalog. You end up editing with a second window open, cross-referencing filenames against a comment thread or an email.
No structure carries over. If you organised the gallery into sections for the client, that grouping doesn't reach Lightroom. Album picks, wall print picks, and social media picks all arrive as one flat list of filenames, and you re-sort them by hand.
Errors compound. Manual filename matching invites mistakes, and partial matches make it worse. Miss one photo and your client notices it's absent from the final gallery. Flag the wrong one and you've edited a photo nobody asked for.
A different approach: syncing selections automatically
We built Gallerina because my co-founder and I kept watching photographers lose time at exactly this step. Gallerina is a client proofing gallery with a Lightroom Classic plugin called GallerinaSync that works in the opposite direction from what you're used to. Instead of pushing photos from Lightroom to a gallery, it pulls client selections from the gallery back into Lightroom.
Here's how the workflow looks:
Upload your unedited JPGs to Gallerina. Drag and drop from your shoot folder. In our tests, the upload speed is faster than Google Drive for the same batch of photos.
Share the gallery with your client. They get a link and a PIN. No account creation needed. The gallery is branded with your name and logo.
Your client picks their favourites. They can heart photos, leave comments on individual images, and you can organise photos into groups (ceremony, reception, portraits, etc.).
Open the GallerinaSync plugin in Lightroom Classic. The plugin automatically detects which project to sync based on the photos in your catalog. Click sync.
Selections appear in your catalog. The photos your client picked get colour labels, star ratings, and any comments they left. If you used groups in Gallerina, those sync as Lightroom collections. The whole sync takes a few seconds, not 30 minutes.
After that, you can filter your catalog by colour label to see only the selected photos, read your client's comments right inside Lightroom, and start editing. If your client changes their mind and swaps a few photos, you re-sync and the labels update.
How this fits with your existing workflow
Gallerina handles the proofing-to-Lightroom step. It works alongside whatever you already use for final delivery and sales. If CloudSpot is where you deliver finished galleries, sell prints, and handle contracts, you keep using CloudSpot for all of that. The workflow becomes:
Shoot the wedding.
Cull in Lightroom Classic.
Upload unedited JPGs to Gallerina for client proofing.
Client picks favourites in Gallerina.
Sync selections back to Lightroom via GallerinaSync.
Edit only the photos your client chose.
Upload edited finals to CloudSpot for delivery, store, and client management.
Gallerina sits between steps 3 and 6. CloudSpot sits at step 7. No overlap, no switching platforms, no migrating your back catalog.
For a broader look at why an automated proofing loop cuts turnaround times, see our guide on how to let clients choose their photos without losing your mind.
Manual vs plugin: a realistic comparison
Manual (CloudSpot filename copy): 20-40 minutes to match 150 selections. Only works if filenames match exactly between CloudSpot and Lightroom. Client feedback stays in CloudSpot. Gallery structure doesn't carry over. Colour labels and star ratings applied manually per photo. Client changes their mind, you redo the process.
GallerinaSync Plugin: Under 5 seconds to sync 150 selections. Client comments synced to each photo in Lightroom. Gallery groups become Lightroom collections automatically. Colour labels and star ratings applied automatically. Client changes their mind, re-sync in seconds.
If you use other gallery platforms alongside CloudSpot, we've written the same breakdown for Pixieset and for ShootProof.
Getting started
If you want to try the automatic sync on your next shoot, Gallerina has a free tier that includes the GallerinaSync Lightroom Classic plugin. You don't need to move away from CloudSpot to test it. Upload one wedding's worth of proofs, let your client pick, sync the selections, and see whether it saves you the half hour.