The pain
The shoot is over. The photographer is now a translator, turning screenshot texts and reply-all chains back into filenames.
Dropbox holds the files. It doesn’t give the client a way to say what landed, and it doesn’t send the answer back.
Who it’s for
Owns the account and makes the first cut.
Opens a link. No account, no app, one sitting.
Lightroom, Windows, enterprise DAM buyers.
By creatives for creatives
2019
An internal tool for a 3-person team shooting 300+ SKUs a month per client.
2023
AIR: shoot, sort, select, share. Pitched to an enterprise beauty brand.
2026
AirSelects: one photographer, one client link, one Capture One album.
The loop
1 Shoot
Drop the capture folder. Proofs go up. The RAWs stay on your drive.
2 Send
Send your edit for review. It’s one link.
3 Pick
The client taps hearts, then presses Done picking.
4 Album
The picks show up in Capture One as an album of the RAW files.
Shoot
| You drop | What uploads |
|---|---|
| A RAW + JPEG pair | The camera JPEG, uploaded once |
| A lone RAW | Its embedded preview, renamed STEM.jpg so the picks still find the raw |
| Videos and sidecars | Nothing, they’re skipped |
| RAW bytes | Never |
Pick
No account and no app to install. They open the link and type their name.
Hearts go on frames. Done picking closes the round. The next round keeps what came before.
They can start on the phone and finish on the laptop, and the picks resume where they left off.
Similar frames fold into stacks in shoot order, so the edit reads as considered.
Album
The AirSelects Companion is a notarized Mac menu bar app. It watches for picks and builds the Capture One album from the RAW files on your drive.
The Results page shows who picked, how many, and the original filenames. The Companion downloads from there.
The promise
The photographer makes the first cut. The client says what lands. The answer comes back exact.
What it proves
245
picks from one model narrowing a large gallery, with 94 taken back
1 of 1
voted shares reached the photographer as usable selects
0
failed uploads across 16 batches
Source: AirSelects telemetry, week to Oct 23, 2026. This was the first complete external handoff, so the sample is one.
2023 to 2026
| 2023 AIR | Status | 2026 AirSelects |
|---|---|---|
| Quick-proofs link to RAW | Kept | Folder drop, RAWs stay local |
| Capture One connect | Kept | Companion builds the album |
| Favourites per person | Grew | Shared decision, selection rounds |
| AI similar-image search | Demoted | Collapse Similar, backstage |
| Shot list, naming, taxonomy | Cut | Not for one photographer |
| Enterprise studio buyer | Cut | Photographer on a Mac |