Platform Documentation
Installation, configuration and operational guide for administrators, managers, photographers and Unlimited Subscribers.
Overview
PhotoSales Studio is a self-hosted professional photography sales platform that combines gallery management, media processing, commerce, delivery, photographer revenue, CMS, Cloud storage and subscriber access.
System requirements
Recommended runtime: PHP 8.2/8.3, MySQL, HTTPS and writable application data/upload directories. GD or equivalent image support is recommended for local image processing. For Full Cloud deployments, Cloudflare R2 or another compatible S3 endpoint is configured from Storage settings.
Installation
/install/ in the browser and complete the installer.Initial configuration
General settings
Set studio/site name, contact details, timezone, date format, currency, default frontend language and enabled languages.
Appearance
Configure Light/Dark theme assets, logo, favicon and frontend visual preferences.
Email & public forms
Configure SMTP, contact addresses and reCAPTCHA before enabling public form workflows.
Roles & permissions
Galleries
Gallery Editor controls title, event metadata, category, photographer ownership, sale formats, pricing mode, Featured status, slider visibility, search behavior, watermark policy and publication state.
Use Featured to manually control which galleries appear in the Featured Galleries widget independently from the homepage slider.
Smart Media Workspace
The workspace provides album navigation, photo grid and per-photo inspector. It supports EXIF, WebP/derivative status, watermark state, AI tags, sales/views/history and multi-edit actions.
In Full Cloud mode, the workspace uses existing Cloud frontend derivatives instead of generating permanent local display copies.
Pricing & formats
Each gallery can independently sell Digital, Print and/or Original formats. Digital size can be limited by pixels, Print can use configured dimensions/prices, and Original represents the protected master output.
Package discounts and coupons can be enabled per gallery.
Orders & checkout
Customers select photos and formats, build a cart and complete an order using enabled channels/payment capabilities. Orders progress through New, Confirmed, Paid, Processing/Preparation, Delivered, Completed or Cancelled states.
Delivery & Production Center
Preparation is performed per photographer and order item, while final delivery is performed per order. Photographers see their own purchased photos; Administrator and Manager can see the complete order.
Final delivery records channel, recipient/reference, notes and delivered-photo count. Retention/archive tools clean expired delivery packages safely.
Photographer sales & revenue
The platform tracks photographer ownership, sales attribution, commissions, settlements and payout status. Photographer views are restricted to their own revenue, while Administrator/Manager have broader reporting according to permissions.
Unlimited Subscribers
Administrators create subscriber accounts and control Active, Paused or Disabled state plus subscription start/end dates. Expired subscriptions lose access automatically.
Subscriber Login opens My Photo Access, where active subscribers can browse sale galleries and—on production installations—download authorized originals through protected Local delivery or short-lived signed R2 URLs.
CMS & TinyMCE
CMS Pages and reusable Content Blocks support rich text, SEO metadata, multilingual content and theme-aware rendering. TinyMCE includes formatting, alignment, code/source view and Accordion using safe native <details>/<summary> markup.
Cloud storage
Full Cloud cleanup
Use the built-in Cloud Local Cleanup tool only after remote readiness is verified. Do not manually delete the complete uploads directory.
QA Center
PhotoSales Studio includes Core, Platform, Payment and Release QA plus Cloud Storage QA, Content Integrity, Processing Verification, Storage Analyzer and Gallery Performance tools. Use these checks after installation, storage changes and before a production release.
Backup & maintenance
Use the platform Backup/Restore tools before major configuration changes or upgrades. Maintenance Center provides a controlled maintenance state, while lifecycle/archive modules manage delivery retention and historical records.
Security
Security controls include role/ownership authorization, CSRF protection, session hardening, sanitized rich text, private Cloud masters, short-lived signed download URLs and restricted public forms. Production sites should keep software and PHP dependencies current.
Upgrade procedure
Demo access
The public read-only demo installation is available at:
demo_admin Demo2026!demo_manager Demo2026!demo_photographer Demo2026!subscriber@demo.local Demo2026!The demo installation is read-only: navigation is available, but changes, purchases, payments and protected downloads are disabled.