Privacy policy

The short version

• The photo you turn into a lesson is sent to plan its steps and paint each one, and it isn't kept. The app asks before it sends your first one.
• Photos of your canvas, and everything the camera sees while you trace, stay on your iPhone.
• No accounts, no ads, no tracking.
• Apple handles every purchase, and I never see your payment details.

Who this covers

I'm Chris DeWeese, and I make Paint Studio, an iPhone app that turns a photo into a step-by-step painting or drawing lesson, as an independent developer (Modern Programming). This policy covers the app. Questions go to support@chrislaunches.com.

The photo you paint

• Before the first photo leaves your iPhone, the app asks. If you agree, it sends only the photo you picked, over HTTPS, to Paint Studio's server (a Cloudflare Worker). The app saves it again first, so it carries no location or other details from your camera.
• The server passes the photo to OpenAI's models through OpenRouter: one plans the lesson's steps from it, and the image model draws the sketch and then paints each step from the photo and the step before, so the photo goes along with each of those requests. The plan and every picture come back to your iPhone. Paint Studio's OpenRouter settings keep these requests with OpenAI, with provider data collection set to "deny".
• I don't store your photo. The server keeps no copy, and its logs never contain photos.
• OpenAI may keep what it receives for up to 30 days to check for abuse, and it doesn't train its models on it. See the OpenAI and OpenRouter privacy policies.

What stays on your iPhone

• Your lessons: the photo, the picture for every step, how far you've got, and the names you give them.
• The notes for each step, which come with the lesson's plan.
• The photos you take of your canvas to check your progress, and what the camera sees while you trace the sketch. Apple Intelligence compares your canvas with the lesson on your iPhone. These are never sent.
• The picture and video you make to share your painting. They go only where you send them.

Your free lesson

• Each iPhone gets one free lesson. To keep track, I use Apple's DeviceCheck, which stores two bits for your device with Apple. Paint Studio uses one of them, only to remember the free lesson, and they don't identify you.
• To count the free lesson's pictures, the server keeps a random ID that the app makes for that lesson, with a count of its pictures, for 8 days.

Pro

Apple handles payment, so I never see your name, your Apple Account or your payment details. To know whether you have Pro, the app shares your purchase history with RevenueCat, the service that handles Paint Studio's subscriptions, under a random ID the app makes for itself (RevenueCat's privacy policy). With Pro, the app also sends Apple's signed record of your subscription with each picture request. The server checks it and keeps only its anonymous transaction ID, with a count of pictures, for 8 days, to keep use fair.

Server logs

For each picture, the server logs what kind it was (a line drawing, a painting or a drawing), the model, the quality setting, how long it took, what it cost and whether it worked, with the kind of error if there was one. Nothing else.

Usage counts

The app sends my own server anonymous daily counts of what happens in it, such as how many lessons were made, how far into a lesson people get and whether a picture failed. They aren't linked to you: no name, no photo, no text you type, no advertising ID. Apple's DeviceCheck confirms once that the counts come from a real iPhone.

What I don't do

• No accounts.
• No ads.
• No tracking, and no outside analytics of how you use the app.
• I don't sell your data, and I don't use it for advertising.

This website

This page is on trypaintstudio.com, which is hosted on Vercel and counts visits with Vercel Web Analytics (without cookies) and DataFast (which keeps a cookie to tell a return visit from a new one). Vercel handles standard request data, such as your IP address, to deliver the pages (Vercel's privacy notice, DataFast's privacy policy).

Children

Paint Studio isn't directed at children under 13, and I don't knowingly collect personal information from children. If you're a parent with a question, email me.

Deleting your data

Press and hold a lesson on the home screen to delete it, or delete the app, and its photos and pictures go with it. The server has no copy of your photos, and what it counts for the free lesson and Pro is deleted after 8 days. RevenueCat keeps the record of your purchases under its random ID, not your name.

Changes to this policy

If I change this policy, I'll post the new version on this page and update the effective date at the top.

Contact

Chris DeWeese
support@chrislaunches.com