Skip to content

Questions

The ones that actually come up, in the order they tend to come up in. If yours isn't here, it's one short email away.

Before you start

What do I actually get?

You pick one of the cards in the shop, send a photo of the person it's for, and get back one personal, watermarked preview. You see the exact card before deciding whether to buy it.

What you buy is a high-resolution digital image without the preview watermark. You download it straight away, and the live service will send a recovery link by email as well.

How are these actually made?

Plainly, because it matters: I look for and select the art styles, apply my own eye and imagination, and produce the artwork with AI image tools — on prompts and settings I've calibrated in advance, card by card.

Nothing here is drawn by hand, and nothing here is invented from scratch the moment you arrive. Every card in the shop already existed, chosen and tuned until it held up. What's new when you send a photo is the likeness inside it.

Will it look like them?

It will look of them rather than exactly like them — and that distinction is worth a sentence, because it's the whole nature of the thing.

What the illustration keeps is what makes someone recognisable to the people who already know them: the hair, the glasses, the way they hold their shoulders, the clothes they always wear, the room they're usually in. What it doesn't do is reproduce a face precisely.So the likeness is one of recognition, not of measurement — the atmosphere of a person rather than their features. Someone who has never met them couldn't work out what they look like from it.

It also isn't perfectly predictable. That's precisely why you see the result before any money is involved. If it is not right, you can tell me what felt off and try a different photograph.

What kind of photo works?

The short answer: one clear, well-lit person, roughly facing the camera and framed from the shoulders or waist up. A normal phone photo taken indoors near a window is close to ideal.

Glasses and sunglasses are both allowed. If the eyes are hidden, the result may simply rely more on the person's hair, clothes and posture to feel recognisable.

What tends to disappoint:

  • A hat pulled very low or a hand across most of the face
  • Strong backlight, so the face is a silhouette
  • Heavy filters or beauty smoothing — the model has less to work from, not more
  • Very small or blurry faces, or a face turned almost to profile
  • Group photos. Each card in the shop is composed around one person. If you want two people or a family in one card, that's acommission.

Pets are welcome on the cards made for them — same rules, roughly facing you, eyes visible, not a black dog in a dark room.

Making one

How many can I try?

One photo makes one personal preview. If it is not right, a short feedback question comes before you try a different photograph. No account, no subscription, nothing to cancel.

A quiet daily limit protects the studio from automated or excessive generation. There is no balance to manage and nothing extra to buy. If you reach the limit, the page tells you plainly and asks you to come back tomorrow.

It said my photo won't work. Why, and did that use a preview?

It didn't use a preview. A quick automatic check runs before anything is generated, and a photo it turns down never counts against the daily safeguard.

It turns photos down for boring, fixable reasons: too small, too blurry, too dark, no face it can find, or a face too small in the frame to work from. It'll tell you which. Usually the fix is a different photo rather than a better one — the second-best picture on your phone, taken in better light, beats the favourite taken at a concert.

It's the same photo as last time. What happens?

Send the same file through the same card again and the result already made is shown again. It is not regenerated and it does not use another preview. You can still choose to buy that exact result.

A different photo is a new preview, even on the same card. The same photo on a different card is new work too. The check recognises the file, not the person in it.

Can I ask for changes?

Not to the card itself. The cards in the shop are fixed pieces — that's what makes them consistent, and it's why you're not paying commission prices. You can steer the small things when you upload: a name to include, something to leave out.

If you want the composition changed, more than one person in it, a different style, or something that isn't in the shop at all, that's acommission — a separate, slower, properly bespoke thing.

How long does it take, and what if it breaks?

About a minute from pressing the button to seeing your preview. Stay on the page; it's working even when it looks like it isn't.

If it fails on my side, it does not count against the daily safeguard — you don't have to ask and you don't have to email me. If it fails twice in a row, something is genuinely wrong and I'd like to know: hello@fondandfold.com.

Buying and getting it

What does it cost?

$5.99 for the exact card you previewed.Tax is added at checkout where your country requires it, and the total is on screen before you pay.

You never pay to look. Every price on this site is quoted after you've already seen what you'd be buying.

I closed the tab before buying. Can I see the result again?

Send the same photo file through the same card again. The result already made comes back, without another generation, and you can decide whether to buy that exact card.

What I can't do is look them up for you. There's no account here and no history page, which means there's also no list linking a person to a file — deliberately, and thePrivacy page explains why. If you've bought a card, save the file somewhere you'll find it. The copy on your machine is the certain one.

The email hasn't arrived.

Check spam and your promotions tab first — a lone email with an image attached from a domain you've never received mail from is exactly what filters are suspicious of.

Still nothing? Write to hello@fondandfold.comfrom the address you used, mention roughly when and which card, and I'll resend it myself. If you paid and never got the file, that gets fixed, not argued about.

Can I get a refund?

When the fault is mine, yes, without argument: you paid and got nothing, the file is broken or unusable, you were charged twice, or a card you bought still has the watermark on it. Email me and it's sorted.

What I don't refund is the likeness not being what you hoped, when you'd already seen it and chose it. That's what the preview is for — the whole shop is built so you never have to buy on faith. The Terms say the same thing in more words.

Afterwards

Can I print it? Do you post real cards?

Print it as much as you like — once, or a hundred times, at home or at a print shop. The file is high resolution for that reason.

I don't post physical cards. Everything here is digital, from anywhere I happen to be, which is the only reason a shop like this can be run by one person. If you want it on paper, any local print shop or online printer will do a better job than I could post to you.

Can I use it for my business?

Not by default. What you buy covers personal use, for good: send it, print it, frame it, put it on your own social accounts, stick it on the fridge.

Selling it, advertising with it, putting it on merchandise, adding it to a template pack, or feeding it into a model as training data — those all need a word with me first. They're all possible; email me and we'll agree terms. TheTerms spell out the line.

What happens to my photo?

It goes to one AI service to make the card, then it's deleted from my server — whether or not you buy. It never goes anywhere else. I don't pass it around, publish it, or use it as an example. It's never used to train anything and never run through facial recognition; nothing about anyone's face is measured or stored.

Worth knowing about the finished card too: because it keeps the atmosphere of a person rather than their exact features, it isn't a picture you could work backwards from. It says "this is her" to the people who know her, and very little to anyone else.

One thing does stay: a short number computed from the picture as a whole, which is what lets you send the same photo again for free. It can't be turned back into a photo and it can't identify anyone. The Privacy page explains all of this properly, including how to have anything deleted.

Will you show my card anywhere?

Not without asking you first. I do need examples to show what the cards look like, but anything with a recognisable face in it only goes up if you've said yes to that specifically — not buried in a checkbox you didn't read.

Changed your mind later? Say so and it comes down. No reason needed.

Still stuck?

Write to hello@fondandfold.com. It reaches one person — me — and not a ticket queue.

Asking about a commission instead? That has its own set of answers at the bottom of its page, including timings, prices and what to send.

Business, partnership and press notes live on About.