How your clients review and select photos in Copycat
Understand what your client sees when they open a vault link, how they mark selections, and what happens after they submit so you can guide them confidently.
Once you share a vault link and passphrase with your client, the entire review process happens in their browser — they don’t need to download or install anything. This page explains exactly what your client experiences so you can walk them through it or write clear instructions when you share the link.
The vault link — a short URL that opens directly to the review page
The passphrase — a unique phrase they type to decrypt and unlock the vault
Both the link and the passphrase expire 15 days after the vault is created.
The link and passphrase expire at the same time. If your client doesn’t open the vault before expiry, you can generate a new link from the Vault Dashboard without re-uploading — see the key icon menu on any active vault session.
Your client clicks or pastes the link into any modern browser (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, Edge). No account or app is needed.
2
Enter the passphrase
The vault page prompts for the passphrase. Once entered, the encrypted photos unlock and appear in the browser — no account or login is required.
3
Browse photos
Photos load as JPEG previews in one of two views:
Grid view
All photos displayed as a scrollable grid. Good for getting an overview of the full gallery and making quick decisions.
Swipe view
One photo at a time, swiped or tapped through sequentially. Good for focused review on a phone or tablet.
Your client can switch between grid and swipe view at any time.
4
Mark photos as selected or skip
For each photo, your client makes one of two decisions:
Selected (heart / select) — this photo should be in the final delivery
None / skip — no decision recorded; the photo is neither selected nor rejected
Selections are saved locally in the browser as your client goes, so they can close the tab and resume later on the same device.
5
Submit selections
When finished, your client clicks Submit. This syncs their selections to the Copycat cloud so you can retrieve them from the desktop app.After submit, the client status changes to done, which you’ll see the next time you sync from the Vault Dashboard.
Tell your client explicitly to click Submit when they’re done — just closing the browser tab does not sync their selections. A brief reminder in your delivery email saves follow-up back and forth.
Once your client submits, the vault session status updates to reflect that selections are ready. From the Vault Dashboard in Copycat, you can click Sync Selections to pull down the results and see Selected, Rejected, and Skipped counts. After syncing, you can copy the matching RAW files to a destination folder.See Sync client selections and copy RAW files for the next steps.
