Answers about photos, voice stories, Event Rolls, memorials, privacy, plans and exporting your data. Can't find what you need? Email support@picturesque.com.
Picturesque is built specifically for preserving and sharing family photos, videos, and audio files with attached voice stories. While Google Photos and iCloud store photos, we help you capture the memories behind them with voice stories, Time Capsules, and family vaults designed for multi-generational sharing.
Yes. We use AWS S3 for storage with multiple redundancy layers, encrypt all data in transit and at rest, and provide full data export capabilities. You can download your entire vault anytime.
Yes! Upgrade, downgrade, or cancel anytime. If you cancel, you keep access until the end of your billing period. It is always recommended to export your data prior to canceling.
No, anyone can participate on the free plan. Invite unlimited family members to view, contribute, and record stories at no extra cost. One subscription covers unlimited vaults for the vault owner. Storage and permissions are managed by the vault owner.
Plus members get: Extra storage beyond the free tier, ability to create and schedule Time Capsules, priority processing, and early access to new features as we develop them.
Plus members receive 50GB of storage. The base Plus plan includes extra storage, and you can add more storage packs as needed.
You can add extra storage packs to your Plus subscription as your account grows. Each storage pack adds more space for photos, videos, audio files, and Time Capsules. Storage space is calculated across all of your owned vaults.
Yes! Your Plus subscription benefits extend to all members of your vault. Everyone in the vault can use the extra storage you provide as the vault owner.
The free tier includes: 5GB of content storage, Voice Stories, Vault creation and management, content organization features, and receiving of time capsules (creating and scheduling Time Capsules is reserved for Plus members).
Yes! You can upgrade to Plus at any time from your account settings. Your existing photos and data will remain intact, and you will immediately get access to Plus features.
Wall limits depend on your plan:
Free Plan:
Plus ($2.99/mo):
All plans include voice stories on walls. Deleting a wall doesn't count against your limit — your photos stay in your vault.
Vaults are private spaces for your family's photos and stories. Think of them as secure family albums where members can contribute photos, record voice stories, and create Time Capsules. Each vault owner can customize permissions.
Voice stories are audio recordings attached to photos, videos, or audio files where family members share memories, context, and stories. Imagine hearing Grandma describe her wedding day while looking at her wedding photo. These recordings preserve not just images, but the emotions and stories behind them.
Memory Walls let you choose specific photos from your private vault to share publicly. Anyone with the link can browse your photos, search through them, and listen to voice stories — no account required.
Why it's great:
Perfect for:
Create your first wall from the Gallery page → "Memory Walls" section → "Create Memory Wall."
Time capsules are messages (text, photos, videos, voice) scheduled for future delivery. Set them for specific dates (birthdays, anniversaries) or life events (graduations, weddings). Perfect for grandparents leaving messages for grandchildren or creating anniversary surprises.
Picturesque offers 4 Time Capsule types:
Each type helps preserve memories for the right moment.
All major image formats (JPEG, PNG, HEIF, RAW), videos (MP4, MOV, AVI), and audio files (MP3, WAV, M4A) are supported. Voice stories can be recorded directly in the app or uploaded. Maximum file size is 5GB per file.
No problem! Picturesque includes a built-in photo scanner right in the app.
### Scan Physical Photos with Your Phone
Use your phone's camera to digitize old photos, slides, and prints:
### Professional Quality Results
### Perfect For:
Start with 5GB free - Scan hundreds of photos at no cost!
[Get Started Free](/auth?mode=signup)
Recording Sessions solve a common problem: you have a family member — maybe a grandparent — who has incredible stories about old family photos, but they'll never create an account.
How it works:
What makes it special:
Links expire after 7 days by default to keep your vault secure.
Guests CAN:
Guests CANNOT:
After recording, guests see a thank-you page with an optional invitation to create a free Picturesque account and join your vault.
Yes! Picturesque supports importing photos directly from your cloud storage — no need to download them to your device first.
Currently available:
How it works:
Your original photos stay in your cloud storage — we create a copy in your Picturesque vault.
A digital disposable camera for your event. Share one link or QR code and any guest can start snapping — no app download or account needed. Just like a real disposable camera, nobody sees the shots (not even the host) until the roll is "developed."
No account needed — just a name and email on the roll's link. No password, no app to install. We use the email to send the guest their link to the roll's gallery once it's developed, so they can find their photos again later.
They're completely sealed — hidden from everyone, including the host, until you develop the roll. That's the whole point: no one can peek at shots mid-event, same as handing back an undeveloped roll of film.
From the roll's management page, click "Develop now" any time. If you've set a submission window, the roll also develops automatically once it closes. Developing reveals every shot at once so you can review them.
"Shots per guest" in Roll Settings — 12, 24, 36, Unlimited, or your own custom number. Video messages are a separate pool (unlimited by default) that never counts against shots, so a guest who's out of shots can still leave a heartfelt video message.
Yes — the optional submission window (Opens/Closes) in Roll Settings. Leave both blank and submissions stay open the whole time the roll is live. If you set a close time, Develop can't run before it — the event needs to actually be over first.
Guests and hosts can try different film looks — modern color stocks, classic black & white, and a few pro options — right from any photo. Applying one to the whole roll bakes it into the photo everywhere it appears (gallery, collections, etc.), but the true original file is never touched or overwritten. You can switch back to Original at any time to fully undo it.
On the roll's photo review page, every shot can be Kept, Hidden, or Deleted. Anything a guest flags as inappropriate shows up under its own "Flagged" tab so you never miss one that needs a decision.
Every Event Roll lives inside its own vault. Once developed, its photos become permanent members of that vault's gallery — same as anything else you upload — not a temporary or time-limited holding area.
Not right now — Event Rolls are free for any number of guests during our beta. The participation-level pricing you see when creating a roll is a preview of future paid tiers, not something you're charged today.
Yes — table cards and signs with your roll's QR code and link are available from the roll's management page ("Print table cards & signs"), so guests can join without you texting everyone a link.
On purpose, yes. The guest camera has its own theme (Instant Print or Darkroom) that's completely separate from your regular gallery. Once photos are revealed, they show up in standard Picturesque purple like everything else.
Yes - when you create a vault, you can pick from event types built for exactly this: Memorial, Wedding, Graduation, Birthday, Baptism, Family Reunion, Sporting Event, or a Standard vault for everyday memories. Each type shows the fields that matter for it (for a memorial, that's the name being honored, dates, and who should receive ownership).
When you create a memorial vault, you name a family member to receive ownership. We send that person a claim email so they can take over as the vault's owner — inviting more family, adding voice stories, and keeping it going. This is meant for the person setting things up in the moment (often not the closest relative) to hand the vault to the right family member afterward.
A Picturesque memorial is a permanent online place where a family gathers the photos, stories and recordings of someone they love. You create it, share a link with family and friends, and everyone adds the photos and memories they have been holding onto, so they end up in one place instead of scattered across phones. Printed photos come along too: Picturesque's built-in photo scanner helps you scan the prints with your phone and add them to the memorial. It is not a tribute page that quietly disappears in a year: your family owns what is in it.
Yes, creating a memorial is free, and it takes less than two minutes with no credit card. There are no memorial upsells: you will not be pushed to buy a package to honor someone. Every account includes 5 GB of storage free, forever, and exporting everything from a memorial is free.
Yes, once you allow guest uploads on your memorial's public link, anyone with the link can add their own photos without creating an account or joining the vault. They can even scan an old paper print with their phone right from that link, so the shoebox photos make it in too. You choose what visitors are allowed to do in the link's permissions.
You can scan old prints with your phone camera and add them to the memorial. When guest uploads are allowed on your memorial's public link, relatives who open that link can scan and add prints from their own phones, with no account and no need to join the vault, so people who hold the originals can contribute them without mailing or handing them over.
Yes, family can record a short voice story about the person once they have been given a way in: you can send them a recording link, or they can tap Log in to Request Access on the memorial page, and once you accept them into the vault they can record voice stories from inside it. Each recording stays attached to the photo it belongs to. Voice stories cannot be recorded by anonymous visitors on the public page, which keeps strangers from adding recordings to your family's memorial. Future generations can hear the person remembered in the voices of the people who loved them, not just read a caption.
Yes, you can turn the memorial photos into a slideshow for the service. Open the slideshow link on whatever screen is running the room, or download it as a video file instead. Either way, nobody needs to sign in to watch it in the room.
Your family owns the memorial: every photo, story and recording stays where you put it, for as long as you want it there. Picturesque is built to keep family memories safe for generations, and you can export everything, free, at any time, so the archive is never held hostage.
You decide. A memorial can stay completely private, visible only to the members of its vault, or you can publish a public page and share its link with the people you want to invite. Public memorial pages are not listed in search engines: only people who have the link can find them. On a public page, visitors can see what you have published, play the slideshow, and add their own photo or memory if you allow it. Anyone who wants to see more or take part fully can log in and request access, and you choose whether to accept them. Everything else stays inside the vault, visible only to the members you accept.
It turns a wall's photos into a self-playing, full-screen slideshow — good for a TV at a family gathering, a memorial service, or just sitting back and watching memories go by instead of scrolling. You can add a title, a subtitle, and a closing message that shows at the end.
Yes, if the wall itself is set up to be shared publicly — the slideshow uses the same public link as the rest of the wall. Anyone with the link can open it and watch; they don't need to sign in or create an account.
Open the wall and click Organize Photos. Each photo has a small film-strip icon — tap it to include or leave that photo out of the slideshow (a dimmed photo means it's currently left out). This is separate from the slideshow being turned on or off for the wall as a whole, and separate from the drag-to-reorder display order also managed on this same screen.
No. In Organize Photos, a counter at the top shows how many photos are currently in the slideshow (e.g., "23 of 108 in the slideshow"), and two buttons next to it — Select all and Deselect all — let you start from either end. For a small subset, click Deselect all first, then tap the film icon on just the photos you actually want included; the counter updates as you go, so you can watch it climb toward your target number. For "everything except a handful," start with Select all and tap off the few you want to leave out instead.
Yes! Plus members can create and schedule unlimited Time Capsules to be delivered on special dates in the future.
A Legacy Contact is someone you name — a spouse, child, or trusted family member — who can step in and take over your Picturesque account if something happens to you. It's modeled on the same idea as Apple's Digital Legacy: your account goes to the person you choose, not locked away forever. You can name up to 3 people, and nothing happens unless your account goes inactive for an extended period (see below).
Go to Account Settings → Legacy Contacts → "Add a legacy contact." Enter their name (optional) and email (required) — they'll get an email invite, and if they already have a Picturesque account they'll also see it in their own Legacy Contacts tab. They need to confirm before the relationship is active.
All of them. Legacy Contacts are account-wide, not per-vault — the same way you'd think of "my account goes to my daughter," not "she gets this one album." If you own several vaults (family history, your own family, a memorial vault, etc.), your Legacy Contact inherits all of them together.
Sustained inactivity — 60 days without you logging in. Even then, nothing happens automatically the moment the waiting period ends: your contact has to actively request access, and you're given a full week to respond before anything transfers.
No. If your Legacy Contact requests access, you get an email every day for 7 days with two buttons: Approve (hand it over now) or Stop (cancel the request). If you simply log back in during that window, the pending request is automatically cancelled — no action needed, and your contact can request again later if it turns out to be real. Nothing transfers silently or without you having a real chance to stop it.
After the 7th day of silence, the transfer happens automatically — your Legacy Contact becomes the owner of your vaults, and you're notified by email that it happened (and that it can be reversed through support if it was a mistake). This is the safety net the whole feature exists for: real inactivity — not just "logged in a normal amount," but sustained absence — still gets your memories to the person you chose, even if you never see the emails.
Yes — contact support. Transfers (whether approved, automatic, or an owner-initiated immediate transfer) can be reversed on the backend; it isn't self-serve from the account settings page, since a wrongful reversal is exactly the kind of thing that needs a real person checking first, but it is fully recoverable.
Face recognition finds faces across all the photos in a vault and groups them by person, so you can name someone once and see every photo they're in — no more scrolling to find every picture of Grandpa. It's free on every account, no upgrade needed. To start, open a vault's gallery and click "Find People in Your Photos" (or "+ Scan for More Faces" if you've already run it once). A progress bar shows photos processed and faces found while it runs.
After a scan, click "Review Unmatched" to go through faces one at a time. Each one shows a suggested match (if it's confident enough) or "No match found." Tap the photo itself to see the full picture for context. Below it: Name to type in who it is (or pick from people you've already named), Approve to confirm a suggested match is correct, or Remove if it's not someone you can identify.
No — clicking Remove never deletes anything right away. It just takes the face out of your own review list. If it already had a name, that name stays visible everywhere else in the app (search, that person's photos, "People in this photo") until a vault owner or admin does the real, final removal. If you're the one who clicked it, ask the vault's owner or admin to check Pending Removals (next to "Review Unmatched") — they can restore it in one click, or even re-name it right there if you remember who it is.
Click Pending Removals, next to "Review Unmatched." It lists every face anyone in your vault has clicked Remove on, still waiting for your final say — showing the name it was tagged as (if any), who flagged it, and when. From there you can Restore it (safe, no confirmation needed), Name it directly, or finally Remove it for good. This exists specifically so one accidental click — yours or anyone else's — can never permanently erase a name someone else already confirmed.
No, not by default. Finalizing "Remove" clears the name and takes the face out of everyday view, but the photo and the face's data stay in your account — you can find and restore it later from Account Settings → Data and Storage → Discarded Faces, no re-scan needed. The confirmation screen still asks you to be sure, though: if you don't personally recognize someone, that doesn't always mean they're not family — they may be from a branch of the family another member would recognize. When in doubt, leave it for someone else to review instead.
Yes. Go to Account Settings → Data and Storage → Discarded Faces. It lists every face that's ever been fully removed from your vaults, along with the name it had (if it was tagged) and when it was removed. Click Restore on any of them — if the person's name is still in your vault, it's reattached automatically, no re-scanning required.
Faces like that — a saint's face on a church statue, a cartoon face on a piñata — will never have a real name to restore, so it's fine to delete them permanently instead of just removing them. Do it from Account Settings → Data and Storage → Discarded Faces: find it in the list (remove it first via Review Faces or Pending Removals if it isn't there yet) and click Delete Permanently. Unlike every other Remove/Restore action in face tagging, this one really is final — you'll be asked to type "delete" to confirm, and there's no recovering it afterward. Only use it for something that was never a real person; for anyone else, Restore is always the safer choice.
Any vault member can review and remove a face from their own queue. Finalizing a removal (the real, final step), restoring a pending or fully-removed face, and browsing Discarded Faces in Account Settings are all limited to vault owners and admins — the same trust level as other vault-wide actions. If you're a member of more than one family-branch vault, each face you review also shows which vault it came from, so you're never guessing on someone from a branch of the family you don't personally know.
Yes, you can export your whole archive: every photo, video and audio file at its original resolution, every voice story with its transcript, your time capsules, your Memory Walls and public collections, and your tags and descriptions. A README in the download explains how it is organized.
Yes, exporting is free with no limit, on every plan including the free plan. You can export at any time.
Your memories are never held hostage or deleted quickly: if a paid plan lapses, adding new things (photos, recordings, new vaults) pauses, but you can still view and download everything, and we reach out gently before anything is ever removed. During a lapse you can export all of your data at any time, and you can download and delete a vault yourself to bring your archive back under the free 5 GB. We send a friendly reminder once a week for six weeks, and you see a kind note to update your payment method when you sign in. If there is still no response, we check whether you named a legacy contact and let them know they can ask to take over your archive so it stays with your family (that needs 60 days of inactivity, as always). Nothing is ever deleted automatically: before any account is closed, a member of our team will reach out to you personally. The free 5 GB plan never expires.
You will always be able to see and export everything. Once billing is live, if you go over 5 GB we will let you know and give you about two weeks to add storage, download, or delete something before adding new things pauses, and even then you keep full access to everything you already have. (During the beta we only let you know that you are over 5 GB.)
Yes, exports contain the files you uploaded at full resolution, not the smaller versions shown in the gallery.
Yes, each voice story is exported with its written transcript, so the recording stays tied to the photo it was recorded on.
Yes, you can export a single vault or all of your vaults at once. Open the gear icon (Account), choose Data and Storage, and pick a vault or All Vaults.
An export usually takes about 72 hours, because your archive is retrieved from long-term storage, and we email you as soon as it is ready. Large archives are delivered as several ZIP files, each under 4 GB, so there is no practical size limit.
Yes, you never need Picturesque to open your own archive. Photos, videos and audio are standard files that open on any computer, and the manifest that lists your tags and descriptions is plain text.
You do. You keep full ownership of everything you upload, we claim no intellectual property rights over it, and the service simply stores and displays it on your behalf. We do not sell your data or use your content for advertising.
We earn from storage and services, not from your data. The free plan includes 5 GB forever; paid plans add storage, and optional services such as AI photo retouching and Event Rolls for guests are paid. Export is free on every plan.
Yes, you can name up to three legacy contacts (it's free), and if something ever happens to you, one of them can take over your whole account, every vault together, so the archive stays with your family. It only happens after your account has been inactive for 60 days and your contact asks for access; you then get a full week of daily emails to say stop, and if there is no response the transfer happens and you are told by email. If you or your family need help sooner, contact us and a person will help. A transfer can be reversed through support if it was a mistake.
Start with one vault for a specific couple or family unit - like your grandparents. Create the vault and invite all the cousins, aunts, uncles, and extended family to contribute. They can add photos and record voice stories without needing storage on their account - everything goes into YOUR vault using YOUR storage.
*Example:* Create "Grandma & Grandpa Smith's Vault" and invite all 30+ cousins. They can all add photos with their free accounts - you're providing the storage space as the vault owner. Now everyone has access to photos they've never seen before!
This is where the magic happens! When your cousin sees the beautiful collection in your grandparents' vault and experiences the voice stories feature, they'll naturally want to:
*The result:* Your extended family naturally builds out the complete family tree, with different family members each owning and maintaining vaults for the branches to which they're closest.
*The Strategy: Example*
*Why this works:*
*Real example:* "I created a vault for my grandparents using my Picturesque account. My 20 cousins all contributed photos with their free accounts. Within a month, five of them had created vaults for other parts of our family tree. Now we have eight different vaults covering four generations!"
*When you own a vault:*
*The natural outcome:*
The key is that each family member becomes the keeper of the family history to which they're most connected. You might maintain your grandparents' vault, while your cousin maintains one for the great-aunt who helped raise them. Together, you're building something none of you could create alone.
On the login screen, click "Forgot?" next to the password field, then enter your email. We'll send you a reset link — click it to set a new password. Don't see the email? Check your spam folder. This is separate from changing your password while logged in (Account Settings → Password & Security), which is for when you already know your current password and just want to update it.
Only vault members you explicitly invite can see your photos. Each vault is completely private. You control permissions for each member.
Yes! Export your entire vault anytime as a ZIP file with all photos, videos, audio, voice stories, Time Capsules, and metadata. We also provide JSON exports for technical users. Your data is always yours.
Yes — AI features are already live! Face Recognition automatically tags and groups people across your photos, so you can search by who's in the shot. AI Photo Restoration repairs scratches, fading, and damage on old scanned photos. Visit our New Features page when logged in to vote on what we build next.
Your vault is always private. A Memory Wall only shows the specific photos you choose — nothing else from your vault is visible.
What viewers can do:
What viewers cannot do:
You can disable or delete your wall at any time. Your photos stay safe in your vault.
Yes. We use industry-standard OAuth authentication, the same technology used by major apps. Here's what that means:
The connection is only used during the import process. Your cloud storage remains fully under your control.
Beta means we're still refining features based on user feedback. Core functionality works great, but you might encounter minor bugs. Beta users get lifetime discounts, direct access to the founder, and help to shape the product's future.
Click the red floating bug reporter button on the bottom of the page and complete the form. Your feedback directly shapes our development roadmap.
Beta testing is expected to run 3-6 months. Beta users keep their discounted pricing forever as a thank you for early support.
Visit the New Features page to see the roadmap and vote on upcoming features! Top requests include: AI transcription, mobile apps, facial recognition, automatic tagging, timeline view, and map view. Your votes directly influence development priorities. Beta users get early access to new features!
Start with one photo. Create a free account in under two minutes.