"Can we have the RAW files?" a policy and four scripts

The email arrives a week after delivery and it lands harder than it should. Almost nobody who asks for the RAW files is challenging your work. They are asking a question your paperwork never answered. Here is the one sentence policy, the four replies you can paste, and how to price an exception before you are ever asked for one.

It is a policy gap, not a challenge

The message usually turns up somewhere between the gallery link and the thank you note. "This is gorgeous. Any chance we could get the RAW files too?" And something tightens, because it sounds like the gallery was not enough.

It almost never means that. Sort the real reasons and you get four: a cousin who edits and offered to help, a worry that a particular moment was missed, an assumption that everything the camera made was part of the purchase, or a friend whose photographer handed over a card and set the expectation. None of those is an attack.

That is the useful reframe. If you feel defensive, it is usually because you are being asked to invent a rule live, in an email, about a client you like. The way out is not a better argument. It is a policy you wrote calmly on a Tuesday and repeated in three places, so that by the time anyone asks you are quoting yourself rather than deciding.

This article is about the RAW request specifically. The broader question of how much say a client gets in choosing their own photos is a different one, and we took it apart in should clients help pick their own photos.

One sentence, written before anyone asks

Your policy needs to do two things: say what is not included, and say concretely what is. The first without the second reads as a refusal. Together they read as a description of a product.

The clause itself can be short and human. Something in the shape of: "The final gallery is the delivered product. RAW, unedited and outtake files are working files and are not included." That is it. It does not need to cite copyright law, it does not need three subclauses, and it should not be buried in a paragraph the client will never reach.

Not legal advice. Wording for a contract should be checked by a qualified attorney in your own state or country, and matched to what you actually do. A clause copied from the internet that contradicts your real practice is worse than no clause.

Then define the deliverable in numbers, because "all final images" is not a quantity and the client's imagination will fill the gap. "Approximately 75 fully edited images from a 90 minute session, at full resolution, in an online gallery with a 12 month download window" is a product. A wedding is typically 2,000 to 4,000 frames captured and 400 to 800 delivered, and saying the delivered number up front stops the missing thousands being a mystery. We put the norms by session type in how many photos to deliver, and the ratio behind them in the shot to delivered ratio.

Put the same sentence in three places, in three registers: the pricing or inquiry guide (warm), the agreement (plain), and the delivery email (brief). A policy that exists only in the contract arrives at the one moment nobody is reading carefully. There is a checklist of what else belongs in the agreement in our photography contract guide.

Four replies you can paste

Each one answers, gives a reason, and offers a next step, so the client is not left holding an open door. Change the voice to sound like you, keep the shape.

What all four avoid: apologizing, lecturing about copyright, and "I never do that." State the policy once, warmly, then point at the thing you can do. If a client keeps pushing after two replies, send the contract wording once and stop negotiating by email.

Answer what is underneath the question

A template sent to the wrong concern is worse than no template. Before you paste anything, read the email again and work out what they actually want, because most RAW requests are a proxy for something smaller and easier to fix.

The missing moment is the one to take seriously every time. It costs five minutes, it is entirely reasonable, and how you handle it does more for your referrals than the photo itself. Say yes before you have even looked. If the frames exist and they are usable, send them. If they are not, describe what you saw plainly: "I checked that stretch just before the toasts, and the three frames I have are soft because everyone was moving, so I left them out." Clients accept a clear technical answer easily. What they do not accept is silence.

The speed request is worth pricing rather than resenting: if people keep asking for something to post tonight, that is demand, and there is a version of it you can sell, as we set out in charging for fast turnaround. Handing over unedited files to solve it is the expensive answer, and delivering unedited photos explains why.

Decide the exception before the emotional email

Some photographers release RAW files for commercial work and never for weddings. Some release nothing. Some sell a documented release at a real price. All three are defensible. What is not defensible is deciding at 11pm inside a tense email thread, because whatever you agree to there becomes your policy for everyone that client talks to. So write the exception down while nobody is asking. Six things to settle:

• Whether at all. For commercial and agency work with an in house retoucher, a release is a normal commercial term. For a wedding gallery it usually is not.
• The fee. Price it as a product, not as a favor. You are licensing working files and giving up control of how your work appears.
• The format and the handoff. Which files, converted or native, on what medium, by when, and who pays for the drive.
• Usage and credit. What the files may be used for, whether your name is attached, and whether images edited by someone else may be credited to you. Most photographers want the answer to that last one to be no.
• Storage and re supply. How long you keep a copy and what happens if they lose theirs.
• The standard. State in writing that released files are unedited and that your quality standard applies only to the finished images you delivered.

Not legal advice. A release changes what someone else may do with your work, so have an attorney in your jurisdiction draft or review the wording before you sign one.

For commercial jobs, raise all of this before the contract is signed. A pre booking negotiation is a business decision. A post delivery improvisation is a discount you did not mean to give. If you keep originals long term, decide that deliberately too, with a real retention window: our RAW file management guide covers the storage side.

The paragraph that stops the question being asked

The best version of this conversation is the one that never happens, and it costs you one paragraph in the welcome guide and one line at delivery. The goal is not to pre empt an argument. It is to explain, before anyone is anxious, that the selecting is part of what they bought.

That paragraph does most of the work of this entire article, because it converts "not included" into "chosen for you", which is what actually happened. There is a longer client facing version, plus wording for the frames that were not picked, in explaining the cull to clients. Say it at inquiry, say it in the agreement, say it again at delivery. Three quiet repetitions beat one firm refusal.

Where Kepla fits, honestly

None of this is a software problem, and Kepla will not write your policy for you. What it changes is how much energy you have when the email arrives.

Kepla clears the obvious misses and leaves the choosing to you. It checks every frame for sharp focus, open eyes, expression and near identical duplicates, then hands you a shortlist to approve. It never deletes, moves or renames a single file. Every original stays where it is and anything it did not pick is one tap away, which is what makes checking a specific sequence a five minute job rather than an evening.

The picking app is still being built, native for iPhone, iPad and Mac, so the first pass can happen on the drive home. Founding members get it the day it ships. What is live today is the Kepla booking page, free while we build, and that is where a clearly worded deliverable belongs: the place where the client says yes.

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