For studios
Run more schools, keep your relationships, and win on privacy.
Pholio is the school-photography platform a studio can self-host or have operated for it: consent enforced at the database, an AI-assisted culling pipeline that is early access and in-VPC (off until a school configures it, and never sent to an outside AI service when running), and a revenue split that finally gives the school a real cut.
What you get
A privacy story procurement can sign
Self-hosted means a child’s photos and face data are never sent to an outside AI or photo company, and the pipeline runs inside your own VPC. That is the difference a district’s counsel can approve — and a cloud bundler cannot.
Dispatch and scheduling, built in
The operator product runs picture-day logistics — who shoots which school, on what date, against which roster, and how retakes resolve — so the season is organized before anyone loads a camera bag.
A split that names the school
Every sale splits four ways — studio, photographer, school, and platform — on an exact-penny, add-only ledger, enforced by platform policy; platform admins may correct with an audit entry. The school’s named cut is the wedge that wins the contract. Final split percentages pending
One student record, clean rosters
Each portrait binds to the single authoritative record — the same one the gradebook trusts — so consent, sale, and roster resolve in one place, with no duplicate identities and no orphaned photos.
How a studio runs a season on Pholio
From onboarding a new school to settling the last order, the studio owns the relationship and Pholio runs the pipeline underneath.
- Onboard the school and import the roster. Portraits will bind to the same authoritative record the school’s own systems already use — so there is never a reason to run face recognition to know who is who.
- Dispatch the shoot. Assign photographers to schools and dates, hand them the roster and the retake plan, and track picture day in the operator product — not a shared spreadsheet.
- Capture lands on your own private system. There is no child-photo egress to a vendor cloud; roster-binding happens today, and the AI-assisted culling and cropping steps are early access, in-VPC, and off until a school configures them — never shipped to an outside AI service.
- Proof and publish consent-gated galleries. Guardians claim their student by a claim code or a roster match and see only their own child; a portrait is offered for sale only when a valid consent record permits it.
- Settle on the four-way split. Each order settles on net across studio, photographer, school, and platform on an exact-penny, add-only ledger, enforced by platform policy; platform admins may correct with an audit entry — the school’s leg is a named line item.
What’s live today, and what’s early access
The pipeline you resell is real today. We are honest about the parts still in early access.
- The self-hosted capture pipeline, roster-lookup “find my child,” consent-gated parent galleries, team composites and ID cards, and the FERPA plus rep-PII walls. Shipped
- The consent gate — a portrait is sellable only when a valid consent record permits it, enforced in code, per subject. Shipped
- The parent-facing portrait storefront and the four-way split, building now on the pipeline and gate you can already run. Early access
- AI-assisted culling and cropping — in-VPC, off by default until a studio configures its own encoder service; roster-binding runs today without it. Early access
- The school-leg payout wiring — the ledger routes the leg today; physical payout is the launch-critical follow behind it. Fast-follow
Honest on the money: the ledger routes the school’s leg and flips the order paid, but the school-leg payout wiring is the launch-critical fast-follow — we don’t claim dollars reach a school’s account today. These describe what the platform does now; the binding policy lives in-app.
The same promise, every lane
Whichever lane you sit in, the promise holds: Pholio is self-hosted, so a child’s photos and face data are never sent to an outside AI or photo company — the pipeline runs on your own private system, in your own VPC. Families find their child by a roster lookup, not a face match, and there is no biometric template to leak or subpoena. A portrait is sellable only when a valid consent record permits it, and every sale splits four ways — with a real, named cut for the school. That is true for studios, schools, and photographers alike.