Your family story should feel personal—not mysterious.

What the pilot collects

When you create a Volume, A Volume of Us may store the Creator’s name and email, the book subject, intended recipient and occasion, your private project brief, the personality words, desired feeling and curated colour choices you confirm, written or voice-confirmed memories, uploaded photographs and voice recordings, Book Director questions and reflections, editorial and design direction, story drafts, and project progress.

How the Studio uses material

A structured automated process uses selected photograph previews and the words you provide across three named disciplines: Book Direction, Photograph Preparation, and Visual Book Design. These names describe what the process does; they are not individually assigned people typing to you live. The process suggests questions, an editorial direction, a story draft, restrained photograph preparation, and a personalized cover and page direction. A photograph remains only a clue: the service does not use face recognition and is not designed to confirm identity, relationship, location, date, sensitive traits, preferences, or private feelings from an image. You remain responsible for confirming every fact and creative direction.

Photo Atelier preparation

The private Studio may inspect source dimensions and broad tonal characteristics, create a bounded analysis preview, and save a checksum, quality note, and reversible recipe for crop, light, contrast, and colour balance. The untouched upload is retained separately and is never overwritten. For an eligible source, the Studio may create a separate Print Master using a faithful rendition, restrained resampling, careful enlargement of no more than 2×, and mild print sharpening. A screenshot receives a crop proposal only when exactly one photograph has fully visible, unambiguous boundaries and confidence is high; multiple, obscured, ambiguous, or lower-confidence screenshots require the original. Preparation cannot recover true detail that was never captured, repair severe damage, replace faces, remove objects or backgrounds, or invent a different scene. Native source resolution, retained post-crop resolution, and prepared output resolution remain separate in the quality record. You compare genuinely different source and prepared files when a correction is proposed. Exact placement resolution is checked again before print.

Private voice messages

Optional voice replies during onboarding—including who the Volume is for, conversational follow-ups, and the first photograph memory—are sent once for server-side speech recognition, returned as editable text, and then discarded rather than saved as audio with a Volume. You can replay the recording on your device, speak again, or correct any word before continuing. If you create the Volume, only the text you checked proceeds into its private story material. In the Studio, voice answers are stored privately with your Volume and sent to our speech-recognition and editorial-processing provider for recognition and a short meaning summary. The raw transcript is not shown in the Studio. You can replay the original recording, correct the summary, record again, or confirm it. Only the summary you confirm becomes a story memory; the temporary raw transcript is cleared from the project record after confirmation.

Studio recordings are private working inputs for recognition and replay while the book is created. They are not sold, delivered as a separate archival audio product, or included in the premium hardcover.

Specialist processing and external providers

When the editorial connection is enabled, selected image previews sized for analysis, voice recordings submitted for speech recognition, and relevant project text may be sent securely to speech-recognition and editorial-processing providers to organize possible story moments, prepare a meaning summary, or suggest a question, direction, or draft. The Creator’s email is not included in those requests. When the connection is unavailable, the pilot may show clearly labeled guided questions and a typed-answer fallback.

Your private Studio access

Your Studio uses a secure browser cookie lasting up to 30 days. You may request a one-time private return note by email; it expires after 15 minutes, creates a separate session for that browser, and cannot be reused. Only hashed forms of return and session credentials are stored. The permanent fallback Studio link also grants access, so keep it confidential. To offer “Continue on this browser,” the site may store only an opaque project identifier in browser storage; it does not store the access credential, your email, photograph, or memory there. Use “Forget this Studio on this browser,” or clear this site’s browser data, to remove that session. Keep original copies of irreplaceable photographs.

Essential and optional email

The email address you provide is used for private Studio return notes and essential project or production updates. A transactional email provider may process the address and delivery content. Return emails contain a temporary access note and basic Volume label, but no photographs, memories, story text, or permanent Studio access key.

Occasional Atelier letters are separate and optional. They are sent only when you tick the dedicated marketing box. You can withdraw that choice at any time by replying to a letter or emailing hello@avolumeofus.com; essential Studio and production messages remain available.

Service providers and future printing

The pilot relies on hosting, object-storage, image-processing, speech-recognition, and editorial-processing providers to operate the service. We do not sell family photographs, memories, or contact details. Nothing is automatically sent to a printer. If live ordering becomes available and you choose it, only after you approve the print-specific proof and submit the order may the necessary print files, recipient name, supported delivery address, and order details be shared with printing and shipping providers.

Story Check and Designed Proof

The pilot can build a private Story Check from the approved story direction, story, dedication, and photograph previews in your Studio. After you approve the story, it creates a protected Designed Proof viewer showing the complete page direction. The client preview is not offered as a PDF download. A separate print-ready Production Master is generated only for internal production use after approval and is never a client download. Neither artifact creates an automatic print order.

Your choices

Only upload material you have permission to use. You may remove photographs while collecting material, replace an unconfirmed voice message, type instead, skip a question, or stop at any time. For an access, correction, or deletion request, email hello@avolumeofus.com.