Photorealism is a drawing tool. Your work is yours; here is everything the app does with data, in plain words.
Reference photos you import and pictures you take of your drawings are stored on your own device (in the app's local storage). Unless you choose to sign in and turn on syncing, described below, they are never uploaded, transmitted, or shared with anyone, and no server holds your work.
You can use every part of Photorealism without an account, and the app never asks you to make one. Signing in exists for one reason: so the same references are available on your phone and your tablet.
If you do sign in, you sign in with Google, with Apple, or with an email address and password. Photorealism receives your email address and an account identifier, and nothing else. A password goes straight to Google Firebase, which checks it; Photorealism never stores it.
While you are signed in, the reference images in your gallery, their names and dates, each reference's settings and marks, the photograph of your drawing you keep for comparing, and your app settings are uploaded to storage that is private to your account, and downloaded onto your other signed-in devices. No other user can read them. As the developer, Dylan administers the Firebase project and can therefore reach what is stored in it; this is true of every app with an account, and it is stated here rather than left implied. Sign-in and this storage are provided by Google Firebase, acting as the processor on Photorealism's behalf; their handling is described at firebase.google.com/support/privacy. Signing out stops the syncing and leaves the copies already on your devices alone.
Deleting a reference in the app deletes the synced copy too. You can also delete the whole account from Settings → Account, which removes every image uploaded from it, every record of them, and the login itself. That deletion is permanent and is not recoverable.
The starter references the app ships with are never uploaded.
The camera is used for one thing: photographing your drawing so the app can compare it against your reference. Captures are processed on your device. The one you keep for comparing is synced to your account only if you are signed in.
The app counts a handful of anonymous events (such as "the app was opened") using GoatCounter, a privacy-respecting counter. These counts contain no images, no personal information, and no identifiers that could single you out.
When something goes wrong (a photo that will not load or save, a reference that will not open, the camera failing, a crash), the app sends a short anonymous error report so it can be fixed. It holds the phone model, the system, browser engine and app version, memory, free storage, screen size, language and time zone, what failed, and a few lines of the app's technical log. It never contains your photos or drawings, the names or folders of your files, your account or your email. The report goes first to a small service the developer runs on Cloudflare (the same one that answers the Twitch question below), which stores it in the app's Google Firebase project; if that service cannot be reached, the app stores it there directly. Like any server, the service sees your phone's internet address: it uses it only to limit abuse, in scrambled form, keeps it in memory for no more than about an hour, and never stores it with the report or passes it on. For the failures worth a look, the service also sends a short summary to the developer's private Discord channel and private GitHub issue tracker, so problems are noticed quickly: what failed, the app and system version, the phone model and the error text; never the log, your files, account, email, language or time zone. Full reports are read only by the developer and are deleted after 90 days. The summaries are kept until the problem is fixed, which can be longer than 90 days. Cloudflare, Discord and GitHub handle this on the developer's behalf; their policies are at cloudflare.com/privacypolicy, discord.com/privacy and docs.github.com/site-policy.
To show when Dylan is streaming, the home screen asks a small service run by Dylan whether his Twitch channel is live. The question carries nothing about you; like any server, the service sees your phone's internet address, and it does not keep it. Tapping the red name opens Twitch, whose own privacy policy applies there.
The free mobile apps (Android and iOS) show ads: a slim strip along the top of most screens, a small video card in a corner of the drawing screen, and now and then a full-screen ad when you finish a download, leave a comparison, or return to the gallery after a long session. A full-screen ad never appears while you are drawing or using the camera, or in your first day with the app. Ads are served by Google AdMob. To find the best-paying ad, AdMob may let other advertising companies bid for the space through Google's own system. Today these are PubMatic, Index Exchange, Magnite, Equativ and Smaato. They receive the same kind of information as Google's service: your device's advertising identifier, a rough location estimated from your internet address, basic device details, and how you interact with the ads. They never receive your drawings, photos, files or account details. To pick and measure ads, Google's advertising service receives your device's advertising identifier and standard technical details (such as device type and approximate region). The web version at realismdrawing.com currently shows no ads.
If you are in a region with consent laws (such as the EU or UK), the app asks for your choice before any of this happens, and you can change it later. On iPhone, Apple's “Allow tracking” prompt controls whether the advertising identifier is used; declining still shows ads, just not personalised ones. You can also reset or delete your advertising identifier any time in your device's settings under Ads / Privacy. How Google uses this data is described at policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites.
Remove Ads, where offered, comes as a one-time purchase, which removes advertising permanently, or as a monthly subscription, which removes it while the subscription is active. Purchases are handled entirely by your app store.
Advertising is unrelated to accounts. Signing in does not change which ads you see, and no account information is shared with Google's advertising service.
The backup file you can export from Settings contains your references, captures, and settings. It is created locally and saved where you choose; the app never sends it anywhere.
Questions or concerns: reach out through the Photorealism Discord (linked on the app's project page).
This policy covers the Photorealism web app and the Photorealism mobile apps for Android and iOS. If data practices ever change, this page will say so before the change applies.