Terms of Service

1. What WinPhoto provides

WinPhoto is a photography-competition discovery and curation tool. You upload a portfolio of photographs; we analyse each at the scene level (subject, style, composition, cultural markers) and rank them against currently-open competitions, telling you which photo wins for which competition. We do not judge whether any photo will win the competition itself — we judge fit against published criteria.

2. What we explicitly do not do

• We do not submit any work to any competition on your behalf.
• We do not retain your photographs beyond your active session — they are deleted on tab close, on Clear all, or after 30 minutes idle.
• We do not use your photographs to train AI models — ours or anyone else's.
• We compare your photos to each other within your own session (that is the product). We never compare your photos to other users' work.
• We do not perform face recognition or any biometric identification.

3. Eligibility

You must be at least 16 years old to open an account on WinPhoto (GDPR Art. 8 — strictest member-state floor, applied uniformly). The first time you sign in, we ask you to confirm your age and accept these terms; the confirmation is recorded with an ISO timestamp on your account.

If you discover you have created an account in error before turning 16, email privacy@winphoto.io and we will erase it.

4. Authorship and curatorial responsibility

Top-tier photography competitions (World Press Photo, Sony World Photography, HIPA, National Geographic, Magnum, and similar) require the entrant to personally author every curatorial choice — including which photograph, which category, and which submission strategy. Our ranking is input to your decision. Submitting a WinPhoto-suggested entry without independent review may put you in violation of those competitions' rules. You agree that the final choice to submit is yours alone.

5. Your rights to your photographs

You retain all copyright and ownership rights to any photograph you upload. WinPhoto does not claim a license to your photographs.

For the duration of your active session — and only that — you grant WinPhoto a strictly limited, revocable, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licence to (a) hold the photograph in private session storage, (b) transmit it to AWS Bedrock (eu-west-1) for AI classification under Zero Data Retention, and (c) display it back to you in the in-session preview. The licence terminates immediately on session expiry, on Clear all, or on tab close. We do not republish, redistribute, or display any uploaded photograph beyond the in-session preview shown to you.

6. Your representations about the photographs you upload

By uploading a photograph to WinPhoto you represent and warrant that:

• You own the copyright in the photograph, or have the rights-holder's permission to upload it for the purpose of AI critique.
• If the photograph contains identifiable people, you have obtained any consent or model release required under the law of the jurisdiction where the photograph was taken, and any consent required where the depicted person resides. Where children are depicted, you have parental or guardian consent in writing.
• The photograph does not depict child sexual abuse material, non-consensual intimate imagery, or content unlawful to host or transmit.
• Uploading the photograph does not breach any agreement you have with a competition, agency, gallery, or client (e.g. an exclusivity clause that would forbid running the photograph through a third-party AI service).

You agree to indemnify WinPhoto against any claim by a third party (including a competition organizer, depicted person, or original rights-holder) arising from a breach of these representations. WinPhoto's liability is otherwise limited as set out in Section 11.

7. Account, display name, and account-holder conduct

We open a small account record when you sign in. The record is described in detail in our Privacy Policy. You can delete it from /account/settings at any time, no questions asked.

Display name. You can choose how you'd like to be greeted on the site. The name must not impersonate WinPhoto, our staff, or other third parties (literal "WinPhoto", "Admin", "Support", etc. are blocked at the validation layer). It must not contain HTML or script-injection markers. We reserve the right to revoke a display name we judge to be impersonating, harassing, or unlawful, and to invite you to choose another.

Account conduct. Abuse of the service (automated scraping that exceeds rate-limit budgets; attempts to bypass the free-tier quota; uploading content that breaches Section 6) may result in suspension or termination of the account. We will email you before suspension where the situation permits.

8. Competition data

Our competition catalogue is maintained by hand and verified against each competition's primary source. Listed information — fees, deadlines, AI policies, eligibility, rights — may have errors, may be out of date, or may have been changed by the competition organizer. Always verify the rules at the competition's own website before submitting. We are not responsible for entry decisions made on the basis of our catalogue.

Competition names, logos, and other organiser marks displayed on the site are the property of their respective owners and are reproduced under nominative-fair-use principles (US) and the "honest practices" exception of Article 14 of EU Trademark Directive 2015/2436. WinPhoto is not affiliated with or endorsed by any listed competition. If you are an organizer and prefer we not display your mark, see our Notice & takedown page.

9. AI-powered classification

Photo classification is performed by Anthropic's Claude vision models, accessed through AWS Bedrock under Zero Data Retention terms in the EU-West (Ireland) region. Industry-mandatory CSAM classifiers run server-side upstream of any commercial vision model. If a false positive flags your image, the upstream provider may retain it for review independently of us.

AI Act Art. 50 disclosure. WinPhoto's verdicts, rankings, and per-photograph commentary are AI-generated. The disclosure surfaces on /pricing pre-contractually, on every verdict surface, and inside the AI-disclosure modal you accept on first use. Treat any output as an opinion, not a forecast: we do not guarantee that any specific photograph will be selected by any specific competition.

10. Tiers and pricing

Three tiers:

• Apprentice (free) — up to 3 photos per session, up to 5 sessions per calendar month, up to 3 deep-judge runs per session.
• Studio (€11/month) — up to 30 photos per session, unlimited sessions, live web search, saved searches with deadline alerts.
• Atelier (€29/month) — up to 100 photos per session, two-pass second-opinion judging, calibrated personalised competition briefs, past-winner pattern matching.

A one-time "A Round with the Critic" pass (€14) is available for photographers who want a single round of judging without a subscription.

Free-tier session quotas are tracked against an IP-hashed identifier that rotates every 30 days; the hash is one-way and not reversible. Excessive automated traffic from a single source may be rate-limited or blocked.

Hardship. If you genuinely need Studio for a competition entry and cannot afford it, email hello@winphoto.io with a few sentences about your situation. We grant complimentary months on a discretionary basis, in good faith. This is a real commitment, not marketing — but it is discretionary; we are not obliged to grant every request.

11. Disclaimer and limitation of liability

The service is provided "as is" and "as available". To the fullest extent permitted by law, WinPhoto disclaims all warranties (express, implied, statutory) including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

We make no warranty that any specific photograph will be selected by any specific competition. Photography competitions are inherently subjective; our shortlist is one input among many. AI critique is opinion, not professional advice.

To the fullest extent permitted by law, WinPhoto's aggregate liability for any claim arising from these terms or your use of the service is limited to the greater of (a) the fees you paid to WinPhoto in the 12 months before the event giving rise to the claim, or (b) €50. Nothing in these terms limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, fraud, or any other liability that cannot be lawfully limited.

Consumer-protection rights conferred by EU member-state law (including the Consumer Rights Directive 2011/83/EU) apply in addition to these terms and are not waived.

12. Refunds, withdrawal rights, and cancellation

See our Refund policy for the 14-day right of withdrawal, the digital-content waiver under Art. 16(m) of the Consumer Rights Directive, the Loi Chatel pre-renewal notice, and the cancellation procedure.

13. Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the law of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, where the operator is established. This choice of law does not deprive a consumer of the protection afforded by mandatory provisions of the law of the EU member state of their habitual residence (Article 6(2) of Regulation (EC) No 593/2008, "Rome I"). For consumer claims, EU consumers may bring proceedings in the courts of their place of residence as conferred by Article 18 of Regulation (EU) 1215/2012 (Brussels I bis).

The European Commission's online dispute-resolution platform that previously sat at ec.europa.eu/consumers/odr was discontinued under Regulation (EU) 2024/3228 in 2025; we therefore no longer link to it. We are not obliged to participate in arbitration before a consumer arbitration body unless required by law.

14. Changes to these terms

We may update these terms occasionally. Material changes are reflected on this page with an updated "Last updated" date and version. For paid-tier users, material changes affecting rights or pricing are notified by email at least 30 days before they take effect; you may cancel without penalty before the effective date.