What we change—and what we never change

1. The short version

We separate one clearly visible dog from the original background and place that dog into the portrait setting you select. The result is a digital composite; its setting may be synthetic or prepared with AI, and it is not presented as an untouched camera photograph.

• The visible dog colour comes from your uploaded source photo.
• We do not ask an image model to redraw your dog's face, coat, markings or expression.
• Fur edges, crop, scale, placement, background, lighting balance and ground shadow may change.
• A transparent PNG is an extracted cutout, so fine fur, whiskers and translucent edge pixels may not be identical to the source.

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, the approved OpenAI image workflow may receive the canonical source photo and return a transparent foreground estimate for the locally validated dog. Provider colour is discarded. Our compositor restores the mask to source dimensions, copies visible dog RGB from the immutable source and places it over the approved setting with bounded crop, scale, placement, edge, lighting and shadow treatment.

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.

4. The dog-identity boundary

The face, coat colour, markings, expression, visible body shape and other natural details that can be seen in the source must remain recognizable. The processing instruction does not authorize a model to invent hidden anatomy, open closed eyes, change breed, replace accessories, add costume, repair an injury or make the dog younger, cleaner or more symmetrical.

Extraction necessarily changes some boundary and translucent pixels. Fine fur, whiskers, ears, tail edges, attached wearables, crop and the way the dog meets the new floor can differ. If the mask is incomplete, implausible or cannot preserve a conforming visible dog, the image fails safely instead of delivering a different-looking pet.

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

Prepared empty settings may be created and reviewed using OpenAI or xAI without customer photos. xAI is restricted to empty-scene design and must not receive customer images. Scene assets are reviewed before they can be selected for customer work.

OpenAI may receive a customer photo only for the approved paid dog-foreground extraction workflow, after provider terms, data-processing agreement, transfer safeguards, region, retention and deletion configuration pass the production gate. If that gate is not satisfied, remote extraction stays disabled. The live processor register shows the deployed status. Customer photos are not used by DogPhoto to train models, advertise the service or compare providers.

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.