Tools & Discounts for Photographers
Sometimes building a business can feel like you’re constantly swimming against the current, so it’s important to equip yourself with the right tools and resources that will set you up for success. But with an ever-growing number of different platforms, it’s hard to know which ones will have a positive impact on your business (and you only really need a handful of these). Below we’re sharing some of the tools we use for our wedding photography business. There are some pretty good discounts as well, check them out!
Quick side note, some of these tools contain affiliate links where we may receive a small commission when you purchase through them, but it doesn’t cost you anything extra to use these links and we always appreciate every click! We only recommend tools and resources that we use and love. Now let’s get to the list!
Client Galleries & Prints
Pic-Time
Pic-Time is the home of our online galleries. The way they encourage print sells is amazing. Use code 4HVMHR to get a free month when you sign up for a paid plan.
The Print Space
We use The Print Space for all high quality photographic & art printing. We wouldn’t order wall art from anywhere else. Use code 9YWO4KR to get 50% off on your first order.
QT Albums
When we sell albums to clients, we want to be sure that the paper quality matches the image quality. That is why we chose QT Albums who pay attention to the fine details in each individual book.
Business Tools
Dubsado
This one piece of software is our favourite business tool and we can’t live without it. Although it took a fair bit of time to do the initial setup, we now run our entire business through it. We use it to keep track of new enquiries, current clients and past clients, bookings, invoices, contracts, questionnaires and so much more. It saves us a ton of time and keeps us organised. The best thing about Dubsado is that you can customise everything with your logo and brand colours so your clients get a consistent view of your brand, whether on your website or receiving an invoice from you from Dubsado. You can also create a client portal for each of your clients where they can see all of their emails, questionnaires, contracts and invoices all in one place. It made our process so much smoother, and our clients love it.
If you’re still using spreadsheets for your business, we recommend you at least check it out. You can create a free account and try it out before you decide if it’s the right choice for you. And if you love it, you can use code Art&Story to receive 20% off your first month or year, or you can sign up via our referral link here.
Signable Contracts
Although we now manage all our contracts through Dubsado (see above), we would still highly recommend Signable to anybody who needs affordable e-signature software. It works brilliantly.
MileIQ
We use it to track our miles while driving to photography locations, weddings and client meetings. If you no longer want to log your miles in a notebook, check out this handy app – it will save you a lot of time!
Bulb Energy
We’ve been using Bulb’s 100% renewable electricity to run our business. Their customer service is AMAZING and our carbon emissions are down by 1,090 kg of CO2 per year.
Krystal Hosting
We host all of our websites with Krystal, a UK company powered by 100% renewable energy. We love the simple pricing and flexibility but what we love the most is their customer service! Every question and every problem we ever have is resolved within a couple of hours. AMAZING!
Editing, Culling & Designing
Adobe Cloud
There are so many tools and apps out there for photo editing and we’ve tried most of them but in out opinion Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop are the best. We’ve been using both since the beginning of our photographic career and over the years we’ve probably spent more time using them than any other program. Around 90% of our wedding workflow is done in Lightroom – from photo management to editing, creating our own presets and camera profiles to export for print or web. On the other hand, Photoshop is irreplaceable when it comes to the remaining 10% – retouching, object removal, compositing etc.
The fact you can get both programs together in Adobe’s Photography Plan subscription makes it even better and really good value for money.
Adobe Spark
Love Love Love Adobe Spark. We use it to create beautiful online pricing brochures, client guides, pricelists and more. You don’t need to know how to code and it’s free to use.
Canva
Another fantastic free tool which we highly recommend. We use it to create graphics for our website and Instagram. Anna even used it to create the e-book on how to stop getting ghosted by potential clients.
Fast Raw Viewer
If you want to cull your photos outside of Lightroom, we recommend Fast Raw Viewer. If you want to cull in Lightroom but find it too slow, check out this amazing article with tips on how to make it faster.
Books & planners
Here are our all-time favourite books and planners that have helped us grow our business and our mind.
So this is it – these are our favourite photography business tools, programs and subscriptions. We really hope they come in handy, and if you have any questions at all, feel free to get in touch.
If you have any questions or need help with your business, let’s chat.