Terms of Service

1. Agreement

These Terms of Service (“Terms”) govern your use of PracticePhoto (the “Service”), operated by Julio Cesar Fausto. By creating an account, purchasing a practice project, using Light Study, publishing content, or otherwise using the Service, you agree to these Terms and our Privacy Policy.

2. Service description

PracticePhoto provides structured photography training through digital practice projects, including:

• Downloadable PDF guides
• Time-limited access to the online training tool (Live Action, practice journals, Image Review, project personalization, and related features)
• Light Study — a free public sun-and-façade planning tool (see below)
• Image Review — an in-browser workspace for studying photos from your practice journals (see below)
• Free browsing of public content, techniques, and community projects
• Optional community publishing of completed work

Tool access is granted for a defined period after purchase (as shown at checkout and in your confirmation email). When that period ends, online tool features may no longer be available; your PDF download remains subject to its license terms.

Light Study

Light Study is a free, publicly accessible planning tool that helps you explore how sunlight may fall on a building or location at different dates and times. It is provided for educational and planning purposes only — not as a professional surveying, architectural, or safety instrument.

• Guest access. You may use Light Study without an account. Guest users are subject to a limited number of location lookups per IP address per rolling 24-hour period (as indicated in the tool). Creating a free account removes that limit for authenticated use.
• Estimates only. Sun positions, timezone suggestions, building bearings, footprints, and reference photos are derived from simplified models and third-party data. Results may be incomplete, outdated, or wrong. Do not rely on Light Study for safety-critical, legal, construction, permitting, or last-minute field decisions.
• Third-party data. Light Study uses external services and content (including map tiles, geocoding, OpenStreetMap building data, and Wikimedia Commons images). That material remains subject to the respective providers’ terms and licenses. We do not guarantee its availability, accuracy, or fitness for your purpose.
• Changes and limits. We may change, rate-limit, suspend, or discontinue Light Study or any part of it (including APIs, features, and geographic coverage) at any time, with or without notice.
• Acceptable use. You must not circumvent guest usage limits, use bots or automation to abuse Light Study lookup endpoints, scrape or bulk-harvest third-party data through the Service, or impose unreasonable load on our systems or upstream providers.

Image Review

Image Review is an online workspace for examining photos you have uploaded to a practice project on PracticePhoto. It is provided for learning and self-critique — not as professional editing, retouching, legal, or curatorial advice.

• Access. Image Review requires a signed-in account. You may review only images you uploaded to projects you own, and only when the image has finished processing. Some features, including optional optional AI feedback (Experimental), require active practice-project tool access for that project (within your purchased or granted access period).
• Device support. Image Review is designed for medium and large screens. It may be unavailable or limited on small viewports.
• Review tools. The workspace may include composition overlays, cropping, notes, reflection prompts, and similar study aids. Cropped versions you create are stored as additional derivatives of your upload; you remain responsible for your originals and any versions you keep or delete.
• AI feedback (Experimental). Where enabled, you may request automated feedback on an image. This experimental feature is limited to two requests per image. To generate feedback, the Service may send an encoded version of the image plus relevant project context (such as your brief, practice rules, techniques, EXIF metadata, and reflection notes) to OpenAI for processing. AI output is an automated, educational opinion only — it may be incomplete, generic, or wrong, and must not be treated as a definitive critique, ranking, or guarantee of quality.
• Your images. You must have the necessary rights to upload and review any image you submit. Do not use Image Review to process unlawful content or material you are not entitled to use.
• Changes and limits. We may change, rate-limit, suspend, or discontinue Image Review or any part of it (including AI feedback (Experimental)) at any time, with or without notice.
• Acceptable use. You must not circumvent per-image AI feedback (Experimental) limits, automate critique requests, or use Image Review in a way that imposes unreasonable load on our systems or third-party providers.

3. Account

• You must provide a valid email address and keep your login credentials secure.
• You are responsible for all activity under your account.
• One person per account. You must not share your account credentials.
• You must be at least 16 years old to create an account.

4. Purchases and pricing

Practice projects are digital goods. Prices are shown on the practice project page at the time of purchase. Payment processing may use a third-party provider (e.g. Stripe) when live checkout is enabled. Until then, purchases may be processed in test or waitlist modes as indicated on the site.

5. License grant

Upon successful purchase, you receive a personal, non-transferable, non-exclusive license to:

• Download and use the practice project PDF for your own learning
• Access the online training tool for the purchased practice project for the stated access period

Do not share your personal project or access links. These links are unique to your purchase. Anyone with the link may access your project until you create and link an account. Sharing links violates these Terms and may result in access revocation.

6. User content (general)

You retain ownership of content you create on the Service. By publishing content to the community, you grant PracticePhoto a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to host, display, and promote that content solely in connection with operating and marketing the Service.

You represent and warrant that you have all necessary rights to upload and publish any content you submit, and that your content does not violate applicable law or these Terms.

7. Published images

You retain all rights to images you publish. Nothing in these Terms transfers copyright or other intellectual property to PracticePhoto beyond the limited display license in section 6.

• Published images must comply with applicable law, including copyright, personality rights (Persönlichkeitsrechte), and child protection, and must not depict illegal, non-consensual, or otherwise unlawful content.
• You are responsible for obtaining any permissions required for identifiable people, private property, or sensitive locations — including typical street-photography situations where personality or property rights may apply.
• We may remove any published image that is not legally acceptable, that we reasonably believe violates these Terms or the law, or that is subject to a valid third-party claim (including claims relating to visible faces, private locations, or other personality or property rights), at any time and without prior notice, at the discretion of the administrator.
• Severe violations — such as illegal content, repeated unlawful publishing, disregard of removal requests, or serious rights infringements — may result in immediate complete account deletion without notice and without possibility of recovery, including permanent loss of account access, community presence, and account-linked tool access, without refund where permitted by law.

8. Comments

Comments on published projects are for constructive, on-topic discussion about photography work.

The following is prohibited:

• Harassment, hate speech, spam, or impersonation
• Illegal content, personal attacks, or off-topic promotion
• Any conduct that disrupts the community

We may remove comments and restrict commenting without notice. Guest comments (where enabled) are subject to the same rules; repeat abuse may lead to blocking measures.

Abuse of the comments feature constitutes a material breach of these Terms. In such cases we are entitled to terminate the contract with immediate effect and impose full account exclusion — permanent suspension of the account and revocation of access to community features, the training tool, and any services tied to the account, without refund where permitted by law.

9. Digital content and right of withdrawal (EU/DE)

If you are a consumer in the European Union, you generally have a 14-day right of withdrawal for distance contracts.

Exception for digital content: By completing a purchase and immediately accessing or downloading digital content (including starting tool access or downloading the PDF), you expressly request immediate delivery and acknowledge that you lose your right of withdrawal once delivery begins, in accordance with applicable law (including § 356 Abs. 5 BGB).

10. Refunds

Because digital content is delivered immediately, refunds are generally not available once PDF or tool access has been provided, except where required by law or at our sole discretion in cases of technical failure preventing access to purchased content.

11. Acceptable use

You must not:

• Scrape, reverse-engineer, or overload the Service
• Circumvent access controls, share purchase links, bypass Light Study guest usage limits, abuse its lookup APIs (see section 2), circumvent Image Review limits, or abuse AI feedback (Experimental) requests (see section 2)
• Use the Service for unlawful purposes
• Violate the Published images (section 7) or Comments (section 8) rules

12. Termination

You may delete your account at any time through account settings. Purchased projects and PDF access may remain available via your personal purchase link in read-only mode, as described in account settings.

We may suspend or terminate your access for breach of these Terms, including:

• Removing images or restricting comments at our discretion, without notice (sections 7–8)
• Full account exclusion for serious or repeated comments abuse (section 8)
• Complete account deletion without notice and without possibility of recovery for severe published-images violations (section 7)

Admin-initiated deletion for severe abuse is not recoverable. Lawful purchase records may still be retained where required by law.

13. Disclaimer and liability

PracticePhoto is an educational training tool. We do not guarantee specific photographic results or outcomes. To the fullest extent permitted under German law, our liability is limited for indirect damages and, except for mandatory consumer rights, capped at the amount you paid for the relevant practice project in the twelve months preceding the claim. Nothing in these Terms limits liability for intent, gross negligence, injury to life or health, or other liability that cannot be excluded by law.

14. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of Germany. If you are a consumer resident in the EU, mandatory consumer protection provisions of your country of residence remain unaffected. Venue for disputes follows applicable consumer and procedural law.

15. Changes

We may update these Terms from time to time. The “Last updated” date reflects the current version. Material changes may be communicated where appropriate. Continued use of the Service after changes take effect constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.