Last updated: 11 November 2026
This notice explains how we handle the personal data of visitors, of photographers using SmartCull and of users of the SmartCull desktop app (Windows — see “The desktop app (Windows)” below). For the photos photographers upload, the photographer is the data controller and we are their processor — see our Data Processing Agreement. On the photographer’s authorisation (Terms, section 6a), we may look at uploaded photos and processing results on our server — without making copies — to check that the service works, to fix errors and to improve the quality of the results.
SmartCull is the UK service of Fotóválogató. Data controller: Pál Márk Foroszán, a sole trader registered in Hungary (Hungarian registered name: Foroszán Pál Márk e.v.; registration number: 62853549), MAGYARORSZÁG, 5700 GYULA, SZÖNYI KÖZ 1., EU VAT number HU91145804, email hello@smartcull.uk.
| Data | Purpose | Legal basis | Kept for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Account: name, email, password (hashed), photographer details you enter | Providing the service, login, contacting you | Contract (Art. 6(1)(b)) | While your account exists |
| Credit, sessions and purchase records | Billing and accounting | Contract; legal obligation (Art. 6(1)(c)) | 8 years (Hungarian accounting law) |
| Business contact details of photography companies (business name, public email address, website, town) collected from their public websites, business listings and Companies House | Occasional emails introducing SmartCull to photography businesses (limited companies only) | Legitimate interest (UK GDPR / EU GDPR Art. 6(1)(f)); you can object at any time with the one-click unsubscribe link | Until you object; after that only your email address is kept on a suppression list, so we never contact you again |
| Demonstration photos: photos of children shown anonymously (no names, anonymised file names) on our home page and demo — and, only with their parents’ separate consent, in our Facebook and Instagram posts and ads | Showing how the service works (marketing) — on smartcull.uk, fotovalogato.hu, trimalin.fr (the French version) and smartcull.com with its subdomains (e.g. cz.smartcull.com); on social media (our Facebook and Instagram pages) and in paid ads (Meta) only with the parents’ separate, express consent | Consent of the child’s parent or legal guardian (UK GDPR / EU GDPR Art. 6(1)(a)) | Until consent is withdrawn; removed within 5 working days of withdrawal (posts deleted, ads stopped); Meta’s public Ad Library keeps an ad for one year after it last ran (EU Digital Services Act, Art. 39) |
| Consent records, IP address, technical logs | Proof of consent, security, preventing abuse | Legitimate interest (Art. 6(1)(f)) | Up to 90 days (logs); as long as the consent (consent records) |
| Analytics cookies (Google Analytics 4): pages visited, device and browser type, approximate location; IP addresses are anonymised | Measuring website traffic to improve smartcull.uk | Consent (Art. 6(1)(a); PECR reg. 6) — only if you click “Accept” on the cookie banner | Up to 14 months (Google Analytics data retention) |
Lightroom Classic connections. If you install the Lightroom Classic plug-in and authorise it to access your SmartCull account, we record the connecting application’s name and version, operating system, the dates of authorisation and last use, and a SHA-256 fingerprint of its access key. We do not store the full access key on our servers; the plug-in keeps it in the operating system’s secure credential store on your computer. We retain connection records until you revoke access or your account is deleted, subject to any separate retention rules for necessary security logs. We use this information to authenticate the plug-in and manage authorised access to your account. The legal basis is performance of our contract with you.
Uploading photos from Lightroom Classic. The plug-in creates 2048 px JPEG copies of the photos selected by the photographer and uploads those copies to SmartCull; the original image files are not uploaded. Details needed for processing, such as capture times and certain camera metadata, are retained, while GPS location data and Lightroom people tags are removed from the uploaded copies. Individuals may still be identifiable in the images. The same processing, storage and deletion terms apply as for sessions uploaded through the website. If the photographer names children’s albums, those names may also be transferred to the photographer’s Lightroom catalogue as collection and keyword names. The photographer is responsible for how data in their own Lightroom catalogue is used or shared. When the photographer uses the Lightroom Classic plug-in’s Load ordered photos feature, the order number and customer’s name may be included in collection names created in the photographer’s local Lightroom catalogue. The feature may also use photo filenames and capture times to identify ordered images. Under the described workflow, customers’ email addresses, telephone numbers and postal addresses are not added to collection names. The photographer is responsible for handling and retaining information stored in their local Lightroom catalogue in accordance with their applicable data protection obligations.
We do not sell your data. A session cookie is set only when you log in (essential, no consent needed). Google Analytics cookies
(_ga, _ga_*) are set only after you click “Accept” on the cookie banner; with “Essential only” no
analytics cookies are set (the Google tag still loads, but in Consent Mode it stores nothing and sends only anonymous, cookieless signals). Your choice is stored in your browser — to change it, clear this site’s data in your browser settings.
Demonstration photos: the children’s photos on our home page and demo are shown with the written consent of their parents, on smartcull.uk, fotovalogato.hu, trimalin.fr and smartcull.com (with its subdomains), and are kept out of search engines. In our Facebook and Instagram posts and paid ads we only use photos of children whose parents separately and expressly agreed to that. We never use them anywhere else (for example in print or on other websites) or pass them on to third parties — except Meta, which displays our posts and ads. Any use of these photos beyond viewing them — downloading, copying or republishing — by anyone else is unlawful. Parents can withdraw consent at any time at hello@smartcull.uk; the photos are then removed, posts deleted and ads stopped within 5 working days.
Face recognition, separator cards or clothing: to separate the children, photographers choose between face grouping (which requires the parents’ explicit consent, obtained by the photographer), grouping with separator cards, and grouping by clothing — in the latter two no facial feature vectors (biometric data) are created and no facial recognition template is built; for photo-quality checks the software may separately detect face locations and assess certain facial expressions (e.g. closed eyes). To group images into albums by child, grouping by clothing processes visual characteristics of clothing and hair appearance, along with the order of capture. When processing a photo session, the software may also analyse a cropped image of the head to estimate whether an album is likely to belong to a child or an adult. The resulting label helps the photographer arrange albums in the parent gallery and can be overridden manually. For this child/adult classification, the system does not create a face-identification template, compare facial feature vectors to establish identity, or estimate an exact age. The image representation produced during analysis is not retained; an album-level classification score is retained. This analysis can take place alongside face-based grouping, separator-card grouping or clothing-based grouping. Personal data is still processed. The relevant controller is responsible for establishing a lawful basis for taking, organising and sharing the photographs and for providing the required privacy information. Similar appearances may result in photos being placed in the wrong album; the photographer must check the results. The photographer, as controller, decides and is responsible for which mode they use and on what legal basis (recommended use: three ways to group photos by child).
Public shop: a photographer can also publish photos without sorting or face grouping in a shop reached through a unique link; no facial data is created in that case. The photographer, as controller, is responsible for the photos, for issuing the link and for the consent of the people depicted. If you order in such a shop, we process your order details (name, email address, phone number, note) on the photographer’s behalf, solely to forward and confirm the order, and keep them together with the order until the photographer deletes it. Shop photos have no expiry; after a year without any activity the photographer is warned, and after a further 30 days of inactivity the photos are deleted. We exercise no rights over uploaded photos — we only store them and display them as the photographer directs.
Local processing. The desktop app processes photos — and, in face-grouping mode, the facial features created from them — on the photographer's own computer. We do not receive these, the image file names or the app's local log, and the app sends no telemetry. The facial features are deleted automatically as soon as the grouping is done — nothing of them remains on the computer or with us; only the grouping result, thumbnails and the photographer's own photos stay on the computer. The data protection statement the photographer completes in the app for face-grouping mode (together with our provider baseline, the impact assessment under Art. 35 GDPR) also stays on the photographer's computer and is not sent to us. Data stored on the computer (working folder, sign-in data, export authorisations, the statement) is under the photographer's control: the photographer is the controller and we are not a processor for it; deleting the working folder and %LOCALAPPDATA%\Fotovalogato removes it.
What the app sends to us and we process:
| Data | Purpose | Legal basis | Kept for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sign-in: account email; the password is only verified | access to the account | contract — Art. 6(1)(b) | with the device record |
| Device: an irreversible hash of two Windows system identifiers, computer name, app version, first and last use | up to 3 devices, device-bound sign-in, abuse prevention | contract; legitimate interests for abuse — Art. 6(1)(b), (f) | while the account exists; deleted after 12 months of non-use, and immediately when the account is deleted |
| Export authorisation: a per-account keyed fingerprint of the series (from file names and sizes, without the names), number of images, charge, time, internal device ID | pricing, free re-export, charging only for added images | contract; legal obligation (accounting) — Art. 6(1)(b), (c) | 8 years (as for sessions above); a folder name sent by an earlier app version is deleted when the account is deleted |
| Licence acceptance: agreement version and hash of its text, the specifically accepted terms, time, app version, internal device ID (no IP address) | evidence of acceptance | contract; legitimate interests (legal claims) — Art. 6(1)(b), (f) | while the account exists and 5 years after |
| Technical log: sign-in, authorisation and upload events — account and device ID, app version, image count, charge | security, abuse prevention, troubleshooting | legitimate interests — Art. 6(1)(f) | up to 90 days |
Parent galleries. If the photographer uploads selected photos from the app to their account, the Data Processing Agreement applies; no facial features are uploaded, only face positions and album assignment (for the gallery layout and image protection). Recipients and your rights are as below; there is no new recipient and no transfer outside the UK/EU for the desktop app.
Rackforest Kft., Budapest (hosting — all data is stored on our server in Hungary, EU); Stripe Payments Europe, Ltd., Dublin, Ireland (payment processing and, through its Link service, Merchant of Record — receives the data needed for your order under Stripe's own privacy policy); Google LLC (our support mailbox is forwarded to Gmail; Google Analytics, only with your consent — data may be transferred to the US under the EU–US Data Privacy Framework and its UK Extension); Anthropic PBC (Claude API — help assistant: where a question requires an AI-generated response, Anthropic may receive the text of the question, up to three previous questions and answers from the same conversation, and the type of page being used. If a photographer is signed in, the assistant may also receive a summary of their own account and activity to provide more relevant help. This can include balances and credits, plan and subscription status, photo session names and processing status, photo and order counts, and summaries of pending activity and fees. The system does not send separate fields containing children’s or parents’ names, email addresses, billing details, passwords, photographs or facial data. However, free-text questions and session names may themselves contain personal information. Please do not include unnecessary personal or confidential information when using the assistant. Transfers to Anthropic may involve processing outside the UK (in the US); they are covered by the EU standard contractual clauses and the UK International Data Transfer Addendum incorporated in Anthropic’s Data Processing Addendum); Meta Platforms Ireland Ltd. (Facebook, Instagram — an independent controller: our social media posts and paid ads; demonstration photos only with the parents’ separate consent; data may be transferred to the US under the same framework). The UK recognises the EU/EEA as providing adequate protection.
Online payments through Stripe. When a photographer enables online payments, SmartCull provides a technical connection between the photographer’s Stripe account and the ordering interface. To set up the connection, we may send Stripe the photographer’s name, email address, country and information needed to describe their business. We store the connected Stripe account identifier and the account status information needed to determine whether payments and payouts are enabled. When a customer places an online order, Stripe may receive the order reference, payment amount and customer’s email address. We store the payment status and the Stripe session and transaction identifiers linked to the order. Customers enter card details on Stripe’s payment page; SmartCull does not receive or store those details. Stripe handles the data required for its services under its applicable terms and privacy information. We retain our payment-related records in accordance with the retention rules for order data, subject to any mandatory legal requirements. When you connect Stripe for online payments, we process a comparison value derived with a secret key from a technical identifier (fingerprint) provided by Stripe for the bank account used for payouts. This lets us check whether the same bank account is used with multiple SmartCull accounts and helps prevent misuse of free allowances. The bank account number cannot be recovered from this value, but the value may still be personal data. Subject to our documented balancing assessment, we rely on our legitimate interests in preventing misuse (Article 6(1)(f) UK GDPR). If there is a match, we do not automatically approve the new Stripe connection. You can request a manual review; existing connections and other account features are unaffected. We retain the comparison value for as long as the Stripe connection exists and delete it when the connection ends or the account is deleted.
You can access, correct, delete and port your data, object to processing and withdraw consent at any time. You can complain to the UK Information Commissioner's Office (ico.org.uk) or the Hungarian authority (NAIH, naih.hu).
