Version 1.2 — effective 6 October 2026
Painter Reference is a reference-image library for artists. This policy explains what the service stores, why, who else is involved, and what you can do about it.
It is written to be read. If anything here is unclear, ask — support@painterreference.com.
Painter Reference is operated by Boris Pitel, USA, contactable at support@painterreference.com. For data-protection purposes that party is the controller — the one who decides what is collected and why.
Your account — your email address, and a display name if you set one. Your password is stored only as a cryptographic hash by our authentication provider; it is never visible to us. If you sign in with Google we receive your email address and name from Google, and no password exists. Why: to identify your library and let you sign back into it.
Your images — the reference photographs and artwork you upload, together with the smaller preview copies the app generates. Also the titles, notes, author names, keywords and favourites you attach to them, and the categories you organise them into. Why: this is the service. Without it there is no library.
Photo details taken from your images — when a photograph carries camera information, the app reads and stores the camera make and model, the lens, the ISO setting, the capture date, the image dimensions, and any GPS coordinates embedded in the photo. You can also enter a place name for an image. When you take a photo with the app's Camera button, the app asks for permission to use your phone's location and, if you allow it and a recent fix is available, stores the coordinates with that photo in your private library. You can deny location access and still take photos. The app does not track your location in the background. It does not add phone coordinates to the JPEG file itself. If a photo has GPS coordinates and its place-name field is empty, opening its details sends those coordinates to Geoapify to suggest an approximate city, region and country. The suggestion is saved with the photo and can be edited or replaced by you. The image itself and your account details are not sent to Geoapify. Why: to show you how and where a reference was shot.
Messages — if you use the messaging feature: your conversations, the messages in them, any images you send, and who you have blocked. Also whether you have chosen to be discoverable in user search. Why: to deliver messages and respect your blocking and visibility choices.
Feedback you send — your comment, any screenshot you attach, which screen you were on, and the app version. Why: to reproduce and fix what you reported.
App update emails — we may send neutral notices about new versions and important changes to the email address on your account. This is on by default. You can turn it off in Account settings or use the unsubscribe link in any update email. We store your preference and a token for the unsubscribe link. Why: to tell you when the app you use has changed. These emails are not used for offers or advertising.
Activity records — what the app did and whether it worked: the operation (for example uploading an image), whether it succeeded or failed, how long it took, any error message, the platform, and the app version. Each record also carries basic device information — device model, screen size, language, and browser identification. Why: so a failure can be diagnosed. Several faults have only been fixable because a record existed showing what happened on a device we could not inspect.
third-party analytics, and no cross-site tracking of any kind.
For your account, library and messages, the legal basis is performance of a contract — you asked for a reference library, and it cannot exist without storing your images.
For activity records and feedback, the basis is legitimate interest in keeping the service working and fixing what breaks. This is limited to what diagnosis requires, and those records are never used to build a profile of you or sold to anyone.
Painter Reference is a small service built on other companies' infrastructure. These providers handle the data described below to deliver specific app features.
| Provider | What they handle | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Supabase | Database, file storage, authentication | Stores your account, images and all other records |
| Google Firebase Hosting | Delivery of the web app | Serves painterreference.com to your browser |
| Optional Sign in with Google | Only if you choose that sign-in method | |
| Resend | Account email address and update notice | Delivers app update emails and handles delivery status |
| OpenAI | Optional AI image analysis and AI image editing | Only when you ask for it — see below |
| Geoapify | GPS coordinates from a photo, when its place-name field is empty | Suggests an approximate human-readable location when you open that photo's details |
About the AI features. There are two, both optional, and neither ever runs on its own — each happens only when you ask for it, for the specific image you ask about.
AI analysis sends the image to OpenAI, which describes what it sees. The description comes back to you; nothing is stored at OpenAI on your behalf. Currently uses the gpt-5-mini model.
AI editing sends the image to OpenAI along with your instruction, and OpenAI generates a new image from it. The generated image is saved into your library as an associated image alongside the original, so it is stored by us in the same way as anything else you upload. Currently uses the gpt-image-2 model.
In both cases the image leaves our service and is processed by OpenAI under their API terms, which at the time of writing do not use API data to train their models. The providers and models in use are also named in the app's Help screen and will be updated there if they change.
You can. Your library is scoped to your account, enforced at the database level: another user's request for your images is refused by the database itself, not merely hidden by the app.
People you send images to can see what you sent them — that is what sending means. They cannot see the rest of your library.
Administrators can. The service operator can access accounts and their contents for support and maintenance, and the app includes an impersonation feature that lets an administrator view the app as a specific user in order to reproduce a reported problem. This is disclosed here because you are entitled to know it exists. It is used for support, and administrator actions are recorded in the activity log.
Your library and messages are kept until you delete them, or until you delete your account — at which point images, categories, messages and profile are removed.
Activity records and feedback are kept while they remain useful for diagnosis, and for no longer than three months. Automatic deletion after that period is being added; until it is in place, records are removed manually.
Backups held by our hosting providers may retain deleted content for a short period before rotating out.
Wherever you live, you can ask us to:
are the one thing here kept on the basis of legitimate interest, so they are the one thing you can ask us to stop.
Email support@painterreference.com and we will act within 3 days. Account deletion is also available directly in the app.
If you are in the UK or EU and think we have handled your data badly, you may complain to your national data-protection authority. We would rather you told us first.
Painter Reference is operated from the United States, and your data is stored there — our database and files are hosted in the us-east-1 region on the east coast of the United States. Using the service means your images and account details are transferred to and held in the US.
That transfer is lawful under the standard contractual clauses published by our providers, which is the mechanism the UK and EU recognise for sending personal data to the United States.
Your rights under UK and EU data-protection law apply in full regardless of where we are: everything in the section above is available to you, and you may complain to your national data-protection authority if you think we have handled your data badly. We would rather you told us first.
Painter Reference is not intended for children under 13, and accounts should not be created for them.
Access is enforced at the database level rather than only in the app. Files are served through short-lived signed links rather than public URLs. Passwords are hashed by our authentication provider and are not visible to us. No system is perfectly secure, but your library is not casually reachable by anyone else.
If we discover a breach affecting your data, we will tell you and the relevant authority as the law requires.
If this policy changes materially, we will tell you in the app and ask you to read the new version. The version and date are at the top, and we keep a record of which version each account accepted.
support@painterreference.com