What happens to your photo

Last changed on 14 October 2026. This is our privacy policy for buyers in the United Kingdom: the whole of it, and there is no second version anywhere. When it changes in a way that affects you, this date changes with it, and the version that applies to your order is the one that was here on the day you bought.

Who is responsible for your information: Pet Printed GmbH, Fichtenstraße 5, 90763 Fürth, Germany, which runs this shop as Proudchapter for buyers in the United Kingdom. Under UK data protection law (the UK GDPR and the Data Protection Act 2018) it is the controller: the company that decides what is done with your information and answers for it. You reach it through the contact page.

You upload one photograph of your child so that we can draw them as the character in their book. That is the only thing it is used for. Not for advertising, not for other customers, not to train anything, not to build a profile of anybody.

Who sees it: Google, whose models do the drawing; the people on our team who prepare and check books before they go to print; and the printer that makes your copy if you buy. It is stored for us by Cloudflare. Nobody else sees it. We do not sell it, show it, or hand it to anyone else.

What Google's models do with it: one reads the photograph and writes down, in words, what a painter would need to paint the same child twice. That means the shape of the face, the eyes, the nose and mouth, the colouring of skin, hair and eyes, how long the hair is and how it falls, whether there are freckles, roughly how old the child is and whether they are a boy or a girl. It also notes what the photograph shows them wearing (glasses, an earring, a necklace, a hat) so that we neither add nor drop one by accident. A second model draws from that description.

What we do not do with it: we build no faceprint and no scan of face geometry, we measure no distances between features, and we use neither the photograph nor the description to identify or recognise your child, here or anywhere else. We hold nothing that could find your child in another photograph.

The written description is saved with your preview while the preview lasts, and it travels to Google with each page, because that is what the drawing is made from. If you go on to the payment page, it is kept with your book in the private archive described below, so that the rest of your book and any reprint show the same child.

If you never open the payment page: the photograph is deleted when the preview expires, and in no case later than fourteen days, which is the outside limit a rule on the storage itself enforces. The pictures made from it, including a dedication page with your photograph set onto it, go with it, and in no case later than seven days.

Once you open the payment page, a copy is kept: your photograph, what you told us about the child, the dedication, the written description, the story and the preview pages are copied into a private archive. That happens as the payment page opens, so it is kept even if you do not finish paying. It is how a book whose payment reaches us late can still be made, and it has no end date. You can have it deleted at any time with one message.

If you buy: the files that go to the printer, the versions made while your book was prepared and checked, and a dedication page with your photograph on it if you chose one, are kept in the same private archive, also without an end date, so that a lost or damaged parcel can be reprinted without asking you for the photograph again.

Where all of it is stored: encrypted at rest, under web addresses that are never published and cannot be guessed. The only links to it are in our own order system, and they open only after a sign-in.

What else we hold: what you told us about the child (their name, their age, whether they are a boy or a girl, and the words for the dedication page); what you ordered, what you paid, where it was sent and the contact details you gave at checkout; and how the shop itself was used, which pages were opened and where a purchase started. Payment card details never reach us at all: they go to Shopify, who take the payment.

Where that comes from: from you, when you fill in the form and when you pay; and from your browser, through the cookies and stored values described in our cookie notice. We buy no personal information from anybody and we add nothing from outside sources.

Who else it goes to, and why: Shopify runs the payment pages and takes the payment. It receives your name, your email address, your billing and delivery addresses and what you are paying for, including the child's name and age, the dedication words and the extras you chose, because those are on the order. Supabase holds the database. Cloudflare holds the pictures. Vercel runs the site. Google Analytics receives how the shop was used. Our own monitoring records how long each drawing took and what it cost, under a run number that is not tied to you. If you buy, the printer receives the file for your book and the address it goes to.

What Meta receives from this site: that a book was looked at and that one was put in the cart, with the identifiers Meta's own cookies set, the kind of browser you used and the internet address your browser is using. Never your name, your email, your postal address or anything about your child. On the payment pages, which are Shopify's, the store's own connection to Meta reports that a payment was started, that payment details were entered and that the order was placed, and what it was worth.

Why the law allows it: making the preview you ask for and the book you buy is the contract between us, or the step you asked for before it (UK GDPR Article 6(1)(b)). For your child, whose photograph and details they are, it rests on the interest you and we share in making the book you asked for (Article 6(1)(f)). Keeping the archive, so that a book can be made, checked and reprinted, and measuring how the shop is used and which adverts work, rest on our legitimate interests (Article 6(1)(f)). The record of a sale is kept because tax and accounting law require it (Article 6(1)(c)).

You do not have to give us any of it. Without a photograph there is no drawing, and without an address there is no delivery; that is the whole consequence.

We do not sell your personal information, and we never have.

How to stop the measurement: set a Global Privacy Control signal in your browser. We read it before anything is measured: then nothing is stored, nothing is measured, and nothing reaches Meta from this site. Firefox, Brave and DuckDuckGo can send it, and an extension can add it to other browsers.

Children: this shop sells to adults. Before any drawing is made you confirm that you are over 18 and that the photograph is yours to use, and that confirmation is recorded with the time you gave it. We do not knowingly sell to a child, we do not collect anything from a child directly, and we do not build a profile of the child in the photograph. A parent or guardian who wants their child's photograph or details removed can have that done with one message.

Your rights under UK data protection law: to be told what we hold about you and get a copy of it; to have it corrected; to have it deleted, including the photograph and the archive described above; to have its use restricted while a question about it is settled; and to receive what you gave us in a form you can take elsewhere. Where something rests on your consent, you can withdraw it at any time. One message is enough. We answer within one month, and if a request is complex we tell you within that month that we need up to two more, which the law allows.

Your right to object: where we rely on our legitimate interests (the archive, the measurement, and what Meta is told), you can object at any time, and we stop unless we have compelling grounds that outweigh yours or need the information for a legal claim. An objection to anything used for advertising stops it, with no weighing of interests at all.

Nobody is treated worse for asking. Exercising any of these rights does not change the price you pay, the book you get or the service you receive. There is no version of this shop for people who ask us to delete something.

Somebody may ask on your behalf: a person you authorise in writing, or an agent acting for you. We will ask you to confirm it is really you before acting on a request that deletes something, because the alternative is deleting somebody's book on a stranger's word.

If we turn a request down: we tell you why, in plain words, and you can ask us to look again. A second person looks at it who did not make the first decision, and you get an answer within one month with the reasoning written out. Whatever we decide, you can complain to the Information Commissioner's Office, the UK regulator for data protection, at ico.org.uk or on 0303 123 1113. We would like the chance to put it right first, but you do not need our agreement.

No decision with a legal or similarly significant effect on you is made by a machine alone. Models draw the pages and judge whether a photograph can be drawn from; when one cannot, you are asked for another, and a person answers if you write.

How we keep it safe: storage encrypted at rest, addresses that are not published, and no copy of your photograph on anybody's laptop. No system is beyond reach, and we will tell you if something happens to yours.

The record of the sale (what was bought, what was paid, where it went) is kept for as long as tax and accounting law requires. That record does not contain your photograph, and it is kept apart from the archive.

Where it travels: the company is in Germany, and Shopify, Google, Meta, Cloudflare, Vercel and Supabase are based outside the United Kingdom, most of them in the USA, where your information can be handled. Each receives only what is described above.

How to reach us about any of this: through the contact page, which shows the address to write to. A person reads it, and we answer within one working day.