Sixteen Previews Before You Pay

Most portrait commissions ask you to trust them first. You pay, or pay a deposit, and then you wait to see what you bought. Stately Vows is built the other way round: you see your own two faces, painted, before you spend anything. Here is exactly how that works, what it doesn't do, and how it compares with the shops that paint portraits by hand from photos.

How four passes become sixteen portraits

A pass is one style, painted 4 ways from the photos you upload: Faithful, Subtly Idealized, Intimate Portrait and Cinematic Wide. Each is a different reading of the same two people. Your first 4 passes are free, so you can try 4 styles, or one style 4 times, and see 16 portraits of the two of you without entering a card.

If you want more, 10 more passes for $10. That is 40 more portraits. There is no subscription and nothing renews.

Every version appears in a few minutes. An optional Face Lock pass then refines the faces in the portrait you like best, and Anthropic's Claude scores every portrait for likeness against your photos; one that scores low is painted again, once, automatically. It is a check, not a promise, so look closely before you buy. Both partners keep their own faces: no style averages the two of you into one.

What the watermark is for

Every preview carries "STATELY VOWS" tiled diagonally across the whole image, and a preview you download also carries an "AI-Generated" mark. The clean file never leaves our server until you pay for it. That is the whole trade: we let you see everything, and in return the version worth printing stays with us until it is yours.

When you pay, the clean files arrive by email as links that last 30 days, and if you are signed in they stay in your account to download again. The digital pack is $44 for all four versions of a style.

How the painting shops handle the same worry

Shops that paint a portrait by hand from your photo solve "what if I don't like it?" differently: they let you revise the painting, and several promise your money back. These are their words, from their own pages.

Those are real strengths, and we want to be fair about them. A painter who revises your portrait is editing the same painting until it is right. We can't do that. When a version isn't right, a new pass paints new versions; nobody retouches the one you chose. And the painting shops publish money-back promises, where our sales are final once you pay.

Why we sell it this way

Our answer to "what if I don't like it?" comes before the payment instead of after it. You have seen the exact portrait you are buying, at full size, with your own faces in it, before you buy it. That is why sales are final: there is nothing we can show you after you pay that you didn't see before.

There is one exception, and it is the one that matters for a physical order. If a print or canvas arrives damaged, defective or misprinted, or never arrives, email support@painted.app within 30 days with a photo and we replace it or refund it. You don't need to send the damaged one back unless we ask.

How it compares with the AI apps

There are cheaper ways to get an AI portrait. PortraitArt sells credits, $15 for 150, with one generation a credit, and publishes no prints on its pricing page. Wedding photo apps in the App Store sell weekly subscriptions. If a quick picture for your phone is the goal, those are fine and cost less than we do.

What we add is the part after the picture. Every style is built for two people who must both stay recognizable. The previews tell you plainly that they are AI. And the portrait you choose can become a giclée print, a gallery canvas, a float-framed canvas, a blanket or a sweatshirt, made by Prodigi or Printful and shipped to you. Prints start at $85.

What we would do in your place

Use all four free passes before you decide. Try one style you are sure of and one you would never have picked; the surprise costs nothing to find out. Then buy only the one you keep coming back to.

If you would rather have a painter revise a painting by hand until it is perfect, the shops above will do that, and we think they do it well. If you would rather see sixteen portraits of the two of you tonight and choose one to live with, the studio is open.