What we change—and what we never change

1. The short version

The finished portrait is AI-edited from your photo. We aim to preserve your dog's individual identity, markings, anatomy and pose, while allowing slight rotation and lighting adjustments. The result is not pixel-exact. A separate transparent PNG cutout comes from the original photo.

2. Checks before payment

Your browser checks file type, size, dimensions, sharpness and basic technical suitability without charging you. After you permit upload, our own bounded service check looks for exactly one clearly visible dog and records whether a person is present or meaningfully overlaps the dog. A person overlapping the dog blocks that source because clean extraction cannot be promised.

These checks do not create a personalized finished portrait. We do not send your photo to a metered external image provider or begin paid customer-specific processing before Stripe confirms the one-time payment on our server.

3. Automated work after payment

After verified payment, OpenAI creates the portrait from your photo and the selected approved setting. A separate transparent cutout is extracted from the original photo. The portrait is an edited image, not an untouched camera photograph.

The service then creates the full-resolution portrait, transparent PNG cutout, social crops and album ZIP described at checkout. Processing is automated and estimated completion times are guidance, not guaranteed deadlines.

For account batches, OpenAI receives the original photo and approved setting to generate one finished portrait per selected photo. Instructions prioritize your dog's identity, markings, anatomy and pose, but cannot guarantee identical details or verify identity; inspect the result and request a correction if your dog changes. Processing begins only after confirmed payment or reservation of purchased or admin-granted credits.

Finished photos from signed-in orders are saved privately for 12 months. Keep orders and receipts here and download your photos again.

Original uploads keep their shorter processing retention. Save originals yourself if you want to edit again later.

4. The dog-identity boundary

Instructions prioritize the same face, coat markings, anatomy, expression, pose and accessories. Slight rotation and lighting adjustments may improve placement. These instructions cannot guarantee identical details or verify identity; inspect the result and request a correction if it changes your dog.

5. People, overlap and difficult source photos

Please choose a source without people overlapping the dog. The local pre-payment check rejects meaningful dog/person overlap rather than asking AI to invent covered fur or anatomy. A separate person may trigger a warning; you remain responsible for having the right to upload everyone shown and should use a cleaner source whenever possible.

Severe blur, screenshots, collages, strong filters, extreme crops, tiny dogs, multiple dogs or missing body areas can also block the photo. DogPhoto is a self-service product: it gives a named reason and asks for another source instead of promising manual rescue or bespoke retouching.

6. Which AI providers may see a customer photo

OpenAI receives customer photos after verified payment for default portrait generation and bounded privacy analysis. OpenAI and xAI may also prepare empty settings. Optional provider comparisons use separate enablement and processing-approval gates; enabling default portraits does not enable those comparisons. DogPhoto does not use customer photos for model training or advertising. The processor register describes applicable provider processing and retention.

7. Failure, review and refund path

Technical failures may be retried without consuming one of the included subjective refinements. Identity, mask-completeness or privacy uncertainty is not silently overridden. A restricted operator may inspect the order and categorical failure evidence, but DogPhoto does not promise individual manual retouching or customer support for artistic changes outside the structured refinement choices.

If a conforming portrait cannot be delivered, we may retry, accept a replacement source or refund the affected image. If the order has no conforming deliverable, the refund is full. A technical failure does not reduce mandatory consumer remedies, and a paid provider call alone never proves successful delivery.

8. Data, retention and your controls

Unpaid uploads are kept for no more than 24 hours. Private order sources and results are normally deleted seven days after delivery or sooner when you use delete-now, subject to a short active defect, refund or legal hold. An optional link-only album is a separate publication choice and may retain selected, re-encoded portraits for up to 12 months from publication or renewal.

Results are private by default. You can download them, delete the private workspace, control or unpublish a shared album, request your data and exercise applicable GDPR rights. EXIF/GPS is removed from deliverables. The Privacy Notice is authoritative for personal-data handling, the Terms govern the purchase and remedies, and this disclosure explains the processing without replacing either document.

Your dog stays recognizable

We preserve the face, coat, markings, expression and visible details from your photo.

What may change

The crop, position, size, background, lighting and natural-looking shadow may change.

If a photo will not work

We ask for another photo or refund that image instead of guessing hidden details.