curious how other commercial guys handle the whole delivery side of things. im talking about from the moment you land to when the client actually has their files. i feel like ive cobbled together my own weird system over the past year but it feels messy and i sometimes spend way more time than i should on the back end stuff.

right now i shoot on my Mini 3 Pro for smaller jobs and the Air 3 for anything more serious. i come home, dump everything onto my main drive, do a rough cull in Lightroom, color grade the stills, then jump into Premiere for the video. the problem is i dont have a consistent folder structure or naming convention so sometimes i'm hunting around for footage from three weeks ago and its a nightmare.

also how are you guys actually delivering the final files? im currently just using Google Drive shared links but it feels a little janky, like not super professional. wondering if there are better options people actually use for this kind of thing. not looking for something super expensive just something that looks clean when a client opens the link

Foto Mechanic or just a solid folder template you copy for every job honestly solves like 80% of the chaos. I have a template folder sitting on my desktop that has subfolders for RAW, exports, project files, client deliverables, and a notes text file where I just jot down the job details. I duplicate that folder, rename it with the date and client name, and that's my starting point every single time. Sounds stupidly simple but it means I can find anything from two years ago in like 30 seconds.

For delivery I switched to Pixieset a while back and honestly it was worth the small monthly cost just for how professional it looks. Clients get a nice gallery link they can download from, you can set expiry dates, password protect stuff, all that. A Google Drive link technically works but yeah it does feel a bit meh when you're trying to come across as a proper business.

frame.io is what a lot of video people use for client review and delivery, theres a free tier that might be enough depending on how much you're doing. i use it mainly for when clients need to leave feedback on video edits because you can literally click on the timeline and leave a comment which saves so many back and forth emails trying to describe a timestamp.

honestly though the folder structure thing is the real answer, no software will save you if your underlying organization is a mess. i went through the same thing and just forced myself to spend an afternoon setting up a proper system and it was one of the best decisions ive made workflow wise. also back up to at least two places before you even start editing, had a drive fail mid project once and that was not a fun conversation with a client