About
Built by the company that used to be the outside studio
Stanley Studios ran the studio side of school photography before it wrote software for it. That matters most on this site, because the awkward relationship this band has — a school that needs pictures a studio holds — is one we have stood on both sides of.
Having been the studio changes what gets built
A school reads the senior-portrait problem as a studio being difficult. A studio reads it as a school asking for its work for free, with no agreement, three weeks before a deadline, by email. Both are describing the same missing thing: a way to give access that either side can end.
We built the version that protects both, which is why it is more work than sending a folder. A studio can grant it and withdraw it. A school can hold it, use it, and account for it a year later. Neither has to trust the other’s filing.
The same instinct produced the second unpopular decision on this site: correctness rules live in the storage layer rather than in screens, so a wall is inherited by every new feature whether or not its author thought about it. Screens are where a rule quietly stops applying.
The plain inventory
Software marketing describes planned work in the present tense and leaves the reader to sort it out. This is the whole picture, and every other page here agrees with it.
| Area | State | What that means exactly |
|---|---|---|
| Minor-held roles walled from outward operations | Working | Checked before the role's own permissions are considered |
| Revocable access for an outside studio or paper | Working | Re-verified on every use; failures are indistinguishable |
| Publication permission, closed by default, with expiry | Working | Consulted at the moment of use, not when it was signed |
| Yearbook staff composing from the gated library | Working | What can be placed is already only what may be placed |
| Holding an outside studio's frames | Deliberately not built | We point at them; we do not become a second copy |
| Families buying prints | Early access | Live payment is not turned on; no checkout exists anywhere |
| Proving a face template was destroyed | Not finished | The cleanup raises a standing alarm rather than pretending |
No adoption figures, no school names, no testimonials. A product at this stage that displays those has usually manufactured them.
Two rules we will not make adjustable
A minor cannot be the person who releases imagery beyond the school. Not with an adviser’s approval, not for a particular editor, not for one deadline. If it were a setting it would be switched on somewhere, once, by somebody who meant well.
A group frame needs everybody in it to be publishable. No crop, no blur, no partial release. A crop is a judgement made once in a hurry; a blur is a claim about software that a family cannot check.
And two things we will not do generally: we will not sell your imagery or hand it to anybody as material to train something on, and we will not tell you that you are compliant. We describe what is blocked and when it is re-checked; the legal conclusion is yours.
Questions about us rather than the product
Is this a separate product we buy on its own?
No. It is one part of a platform a school runs on, with its own front door because this band has two problems no other band has. The platform is at homeroom.software.
Why is the yearbook a separate site again?
Because the book is an artifact rather than an age band: a K-8 yearbook and a university yearbook are the same object with completely different rules around it. That is a different axis from this one and it has its own site at yearbook.gallery.
What happens when our students graduate?
They become adults, and the decision about their own image becomes theirs rather than their family's. That is a genuine change in who holds the pen and it is the subject of college.gallery rather than a footnote here.
What does it cost a school?
The platform is free to the school. There is no per-student fee and no seat licence. The intended income is a family store, which is early access with live payment not turned on, so today the business model is described rather than running.
Who reads it when we get in touch?
A person at Stanley Studios. There is no form on this site because nothing here collects anything from you. What a first conversation looks like is on talk to us.