For families, PTAs & administrators
Picture day your family can actually check.
The thing parents ask first is simple: where does my child’s photo go? Here is the plain answer. When a parent looks up their own child, it is a lookup in the school’s own student list — not a face match. Your child’s photos are never sold without your permission, and facial recognition is off by default.
Everything on this page is what works today, plus an honest label on the parts that are still opening up.
How “find my child” really works
A list lookup, not a face match
When you find your own child, the system matches against your school’s own student list — the same roster the school already keeps. It does not scan a face to find a match, so normally no face data is created at all. Shipped
Photos are never sold without your permission
A photo can be offered for sale only when a family’s permission allows it — that consent check runs at the system level so it cannot be skipped. A do-not-sell choice takes effect right away. Shipped
Facial recognition is off by default
Face matching is not on by default. It is off by default— the school cannot flip it on for a family. Shipped
One permission decides everything
A single do-not-publish choice hides a child everywhere at once — the online edition, the pages, and any sale — and it is checked fresh every time, so a change takes effect right away. Shipped
Curious what a picture-day program looks like end to end? See a picture-day program →
The family journey
What picture day looks like from your side
Five plain steps, start to finish — and at each one, the honest version of what is happening to your child’s photo.
1 · Set up your family account
You get a short invitation from the school — not a cold email from a company you have never heard of. Setting one up takes a name, an email, and the class code the school hands out. Nothing to install, and nothing to pay just to look.
2 · Find your own student
Your student appears because their name is on the school’s own list — the same roster the office already keeps. It is a list lookup, not a face match, so normally no face data is created to put a name to a picture.
3 · See only what permission allows
What you can view and order follows the permission on file for your child, decided one layer below the screen. A do-not-publish or do-not-sell choice takes effect the moment it is set — on the online edition, the pages, and any sale. Shipped
4 · Order prints, once the store opens
The parent store, where you find and buy your own child’s portraits, is opening on top of that shipped permission gate. We label it plainly instead of calling it live before it is. Early access
5 · Where the money goes
When a school runs the store as a fundraiser, the school sets the price and the proceeds go to the school — not to a picture-day middleman taking a cut before the school sees a cent.
The store only offers what permission allows
A photo can be offered for sale only when a family’s permission allows it — that consent check is part of the system today, decided one layer below the screen so it cannot be skipped by a busy staffer or an out-of-date copy. Consent gate shipped
The parent storefront where families find and buy their own child’s portraits is opening on top of that shipped consent gate, and when a school runs it as a fundraiser the whole gift goes to the school. We are not going to call it live before it is. Parent store in early access
There is no case of envelopes to count and no minimum a family has to reach before it can order. A school that runs the store sees the orders and the money in the same penny-exact ledger as the rest of picture day — the price is the school’s to set, and a family only ever pays for what it chooses.
For the PTA & PTO
A PTA memory book, from your own picture day
Parent groups keep asking for a simple keepsake — a small memory book built from the school’s own picture-day portraits, with no legacy-vendor minimum and the school setting its own price. A photo appears in it only when a family’s permission allows. This one is new, and we label it honestly rather than pretend it has shipped. PTA memory book in early access
There is no case of order forms to send home and no per-family minimum to hit before it prints. The book draws on the portraits the school already has, runs against the same permission gate as everything else on the platform, and the PTA sets the price it wants. When it is ready to hand to families, we will say so plainly — and not a day before.
For principals & the office
What a principal and the front office actually see
Administrators do not have to stand up a new identity system to run picture day. The platform reads the student list the office already keeps, and the posture that protects families is the same posture that keeps a principal out of an awkward conversation.
The same list you already keep
There is no second directory to reconcile. Students appear because they are on the school’s own roster; when the office updates it, the platform follows. A student is found by that list, not by a face scan — the same lookup a teacher does with a class list.
Permissions honored everywhere, at once
A family’s do-not-publish or do-not-sell choice is checked fresh every time and applied across the online edition, the printed pages, and any sale. One choice, honored in every place a child could appear — exactly what a principal wants to be able to promise a parent. Shipped
Facial recognition stays a parent’s call
Face matching is off by default, and an administrator cannot switch it on for a family. It is off by default. The school runs picture day without ever deciding that question on a family’s behalf.
The full picture-day privacy posture — including where cutouts are processed and how long anything is kept — is written out on the privacy page. Read the privacy posture →
What’s shipped, and what’s still opening up
The privacy story is live today: the student-list lookup instead of a face match, photos never sold without a family’s explicit permission, facial recognition off by default, and the permission and consent gate the whole platform runs on. Still in early access: the parent storefront that opens on top of that consent gate, and the PTA memory book. We show you the parts that work and name the parts that don’t yet.