As a photographer, forging strong connections with other vendors can play a huge role in your business growth. Vendor connections often lead to more client referrals, social media exposure and business collaboration opportunities.

The key to these connections is sharing relevant photos regularly with vendors. The Vendor Network feature makes this process easier than ever - from contact collection, to photo selection and all the way to delivery.

You can now easily add Vendors as their own user type to a custom view of your Pic-Time Client Galleries. Increase your collaboration and brand awareness, offer Vendors their own products and pricing, customize Media Usage Terms, and more!

There are a few ways you can add Vendors to the gallery.

If you are a photographer wanting to easily invite Vendors, provide the Main Client or wedding planner with a link to share with Vendors, or add a Vendor link to your CRM, you can use the Vendor Registration Link to invite them to the gallery.

In the Vendors tab of the gallery, copy the Vendor Registration Link.

When viewing the link, Vendors can leave their Business Name, Vendor Type, Email, Website, and Instagram.

Then back in the Vendors tab of the gallery, after a Vendor has registered you’ll be able to View/Edit their Vendor Details, or Remove the Vendor. You'll receive an email update once per day if there are any Vendor signups, and a follow-up email reminder after four days to remind you to send photos to the new Vendors.

When you’re ready, click to Share photos with vendors.

Then follow the steps here to review the Vendor details and continue inviting them to the gallery.

Alternatively, at the event Vendors can easily scan your QR code from the Pic-Time Mobile App! Select the Share icon in the gallery, then select the Vendor Registration.

If you're selecting the Vendor Registration option, the QR code option will appear, and Vendors can scan to join the gallery.

After the Vendors have joined the gallery, follow the steps here to review the Vendor details and continue inviting them to the gallery.

If you need to add a new Vendor and their details manually, you can add them via a Client Gallery.

In the Vendors tab of the gallery, click Add Vendors.

In the Vendor selection window, you can search for existing Vendors you’ve previously added, or filter by Vendor Type. To add a new one, click + Add a new vendor.

Add the Vendor’s Business Name, Vendor Type, Vendor Terms, Email, Website (url), and Instagram (url or IG handle, with or without the @).

If the type of Vendor you’re working with is not on this list, you can select the Other, custom type option to manually add their Vendor Type. This will only give you the All photos or Manual selection options, but you can still select photos using your Lightroom keywords, star ratings, or other metadata. Click here to learn more.

Click Apply when you’re ready to save the Vendor’s information. After you’ve added a Vendor, their information will be saved so that you can easily invite them to other galleries.

Then follow the steps here to review the Vendor details and continue inviting them to the gallery.

To add new or existing Vendors to your gallery, in the Vendors tab, click Add Vendors. If you would rather send the existing Vendor a link through your CRM or direct email, you can follow the steps here to copy the Vendor Registration Link.

Search for Vendors or filter by Vendor type, click on their icon and then select Continue. You can add multiple Vendors at once.

Then follow the steps here to review the Vendor details and continue inviting them to the gallery.

If you are a photographer who has already invited vendors to your past galleries through the “Photographer Invited” link, you can update their user type to Vendor. Learn more about the Photographer Invited link here.

First, you will need to invite the user to a gallery as a Vendor, either manually or through the Vendor Registration Link. Then, the system will scan your past galleries and see if they are already Photographer Invited users in any other galleries.

Then from your Main Dashboard, navigate to Settings.

Next, select the Vendor tabs to view the Vendor Network.

From here, you can view each of the Vendors added, the Vendor Terms, and Past Invited. Select the Past Invited tab. This tab displays Vendors previously invited as Photographer Invited users.

If you do not see any Vendors yet, be sure you've already invited them to a gallery as a Vendor. Any Photographer Invited users who haven't been invited to a gallery as Vendors will not appear here.

To begin the registration of these existing users as Vendors, select the three dots and click Assign to Galleries. You’ll then be able to Assign and send them an email, or simply Assign without notifying them.

Then you can follow the steps here to update their Vendor terms and photo selection in each gallery if needed.

Now you can review the details for each Vendor, including their photo selection and Vendor terms.

It’s important for your Vendor to see photos that are relevant and specific to them, so you can either have the images selected manually or automatically with AI, depending on your relationship to the Vendor. Click on AI selected and sorted photos to see all of the selection options.

Here, you will be able to adjust their main Photo Selection as well as Additional Photos.

When you have a few favorite, important, or high-value Vendors, where the curation needs to be perfect, there are two fast manual selection options: full Manual or Use Keywords from LR/Metadata.

If you have already chosen their images in Lightroom through our corresponding keywords, you can Use Keywords from LR/Metadata to automatically select those images. Otherwise, choose the Manual option and use the Filter & AI Search to quickly select the photos based on other metadata or information from the gallery, including your own keywords.

For most of your galleries where you have 10 or more general Vendors, the AI selection is perfect as it saves you time while still providing them with only the images they care about. The AI also sorts the images in order of what’s most relevant to each Vendor.

Use either AI selected and sorted photos or AI selected, exclude photos with faces to quickly provide all your Vendors with the most relevant images without any extra work from you.

When you have a Vendor who doesn’t have a need for a specific theme of images, such as the planner or producer of the event, select All photos - no curation to share the entire gallery of images with them.

Then, select any additional photos you’d like to show the Vendor, either the Highlights scene of images, or the option to view all photos in the gallery. We recommend the Highlights or all photos for only your preferred and important Vendors. Click Apply when you’re ready to save your changes.

For each Vendor, you can then check their Vendor Media Usage Terms. Our Default terms are ready to go. Learn more about customizing your own by clicking here! When you’re done reviewing all the Vendor details, click Continue.

Customize the Vendor invite email message if needed, and then click Send Email to invite the Vendor.

Your Vendor will then receive the email, and they will be able to view their selection of images! Click here to learn more about the Vendor's gallery view.

If you need to edit a Vendor’s image access, first go to the Vendors tab of the specific gallery. Click the Select photos pencil icon if you want to update the selected photos. You can also give the Vendor an additional view of the Highlights scene, or the full gallery of images (not including any the Main Client has hidden). In addition, you can edit their Vendor Terms.

This will update their Vendor gallery and any previous sent links will lead to the new updated view.

When sharing images to social media, it's a good idea to credit the Vendors featured in the image or event. To do this, go to the Vendors tab and select Copy Credits.

This will display auto-generated credits with the Vendor information. Simply select Copy to add the text to your clipboard.

For your preferred Vendors, while editing images in Lightroom or other editing software, you can use the following keywords to correspond with Pic-Time’s Vendor Type Filter. When using these keywords, choose the Use Keywords from LR/Metadata photo selection option.

In your Settings, in the Preferences tab, you can have certain star-rated images automatically marked as “Vendor Only” and will not be visible to any other users, including the Main Clients.

Alternatively in the Photos tab of the gallery, you can select images manually or using the Filter & AI Search, and click on the Manage Photos option to mark these photos as visible to the Vendors only.