Privacy Policy

This Privacy Policy explains how Light Year Interactive Inc. (“Light Year Interactive,” “we,” “us,” or “our”) handles information in connection with the Tone Caliper desktop application (the “App”), the website at tonecaliper.com (the “Site”), and the optional community recipe service (the “Community Service”). Together these are the “Services.”

We built Tone Caliper to keep your work on your own machine. This policy is written to be read, not to be hidden behind. Where we say we don’t collect something, we mean it.

The short version

• Your photos never leave your computer. The App reads your existing folders read-only and never imports, moves, renames, alters, or uploads your photos or your edits. Editing happens entirely on your device.
• Nothing about your photos is tracked. We never see your images, filenames, folders, EXIF, or what’s in your library — not on any setting. Usage analytics, which tell us only which features get used and whether they fail, are opt-in: off until you say yes, and reversible any time.
• We collect the minimum needed to run a trial, activate a license, answer your emails, and — only if you choose to use it — to power the optional Community Service.
• We don’t see your payment card details. Purchases are processed by a third-party payment provider acting as Merchant of Record.

The sections below give the full detail.

1. Who we are

Light Year Interactive Inc. is a company incorporated in Ontario, Canada, and is the data controller responsible for your information under this policy (except for payment data — see Section 6).

• Contact: contact@tonecaliper.com
• Postal address: 387 Grindstone Trail, Oakville, L6H 0S1, ON, Canada

If you are in the EEA or UK, see Section 11 for how to exercise your rights.

2. The desktop App (Tone Caliper)

2.1 Your photos and edits — stay local

The App opens folders on your computer in read-only mode to display and edit photos. Your photos, your edits, your recipes, and your catalog stay on your device. We have no servers that receive your image files or your editing data. Resetting an edit, applying a recipe, or exporting a photo all happen locally.

2.2 Trial and licensing

To offer a free trial and to activate paid licenses, the App communicates with our licensing systems. In that process we may handle:

• a non-reversible (hashed) machine identifier derived from your device, used to anchor your free-trial period so it can’t be trivially reset, and to enforce the per-license activation limit;
• your license key and activation status;
• your email address, if you provide one during license activation;
• basic technical metadata necessary to validate a license (for example, the App version and a timestamp).

The App periodically re-validates a license with a long offline grace period, so a licensed user is never locked out without connectivity. We use this data only to operate the trial and licensing system, not for advertising or profiling.

2.3 Optional usage analytics

The App can send anonymous usage analytics so we can see which features people actually use and where things break. This is off until you turn it on. The App asks once, on first launch, and shows you a real sample of what would be sent before you answer. You can change your mind at any time in Settings → General.

If you turn it on, an event carries:

• what happened — a fixed action name from a short predefined list (for example “photo exported” or “crop applied”);
• your App version, operating system and version, and language setting;
• your license state — trial, active, grace, or expired;
• for some actions, one coarse detail from a fixed list — for example whether a photo was RAW or standard, or a bucketed count such as “2–5” rather than an exact number.

There is no account and no login, and the App itself sends no device identifier: each run gets a random session number that lives only in memory and is never written to disk. Our analytics provider, Aptabase (United States region), derives a pseudonymous identifier on its own servers by hashing the network address your connection came from together with a salt it discards every 24 hours — so activity cannot be correlated from one day to the next, or across different apps. The network address is also used to infer an approximate country and region.

Never sent, on any setting: your photos or thumbnails, filenames, file paths, EXIF data, GPS or precise location, camera serial numbers, your email address, your license key, recipe names or any other text you write, and which photos are in your library.

2.4 What the App does not do

• It does not upload your photos or edits.
• It does not scan or index your library for our benefit.
• It does not send us anything about your editing unless you turn on usage analytics — and even then, only the fixed action names described in Section 2.3.

3. The website (tonecaliper.com)

3.1 Contact and application forms

If you contact us through the Site, we receive the information you submit (such as your email address and message) so we can respond. We process and deliver these messages using a third-party email provider (currently Resend). We keep correspondence only as long as needed to handle your request and our records.

If you apply for the student price, we also receive your name and the institution you tell us you attend, so that a person can review the request and reply with a discount code. We use this only to decide and fulfil that request. We do not verify your enrolment with your institution, we do not ask for identity documents, and we do not share these details with anyone outside our email provider.

To keep these forms from being abused by bots, we use Cloudflare Turnstile. It runs a background check when you submit a form and may receive technical information such as your IP address and browser characteristics in order to tell a person from an automated script. It does not use this to track you across other websites or build an advertising profile, and it usually completes without showing you anything or asking you to solve a puzzle.

The same check also runs inside the desktop App when you sign in to the optional Community Service (Section 4), for the same reason and on the same terms.

3.2 Analytics and cookies

We use Umami, a privacy-friendly website analytics tool, on the Site only (not in the desktop App). Umami gives us aggregate, anonymized statistics — such as page views, referrers, and general country-level location — so we can understand overall Site traffic. It does not use cookies, does not track you across other websites, and does not build an advertising profile of you. Because no personal data is stored for this purpose and no cookies are set, we do not show a tracking-consent banner for analytics. The App’s own optional analytics are a separate thing, described in Section 2.3.

The Site otherwise uses only the cookies and storage necessary for it to function, plus the single affiliate-referral cookie described in Section 3.4 when you arrive through a partner link. We do not use third-party advertising or cross-site tracking cookies.

If you create a Community Service account and log in through the Site, we set the cookies needed to keep you signed in (see Section 4).

3.4 Affiliate referrals

Some people recommend Tone Caliper through our affiliate program and earn a commission when their recommendation leads to a purchase. If you arrive at the Site through such a partner link, our affiliate platform, Rekomi, sets a first-party cookie (and equivalent browser storage) containing a random referral identifier, kept for up to 60 days, so that a purchase you make in that window can be credited to the partner who referred you.

The script that does this is served from affiliates.tonecaliper.com, a subdomain of our own site that points to Rekomi. Serving it from our own domain changes where the script loads from, not what it records — which is only the referral identifier described here.

This cookie exists only to credit the referral. It contains no personal information and no browsing history, it does not track you across other websites, and it is set only when you follow a partner link — visiting the Site normally sets nothing. If you buy, the referral identifier travels with the order to our Merchant of Record (Section 6), which is how a sale is matched to the partner who referred you. It is not used for advertising or profiling, and it never affects the price you pay. You can remove it at any time by clearing your browser’s cookies and site data.

Working out whether a commission is owed requires real order data, so when a purchase completes, our Merchant of Record notifies Rekomi. This happens for every completed purchase, not only those that began with a partner link, because whether a referral is attached can only be established by looking at the order itself. That notification includes your email address, your name and billing country, the amount and currency, the product purchased, and any discount applied. Rekomi uses it solely to determine and calculate affiliate commissions, and to reverse a commission if the purchase is later refunded. It does not receive your payment card details, and it has no access to your photos, your library, your license key, or anything you do inside the App.

Rekomi’s own privacy policy and cookie policy describe how it handles the information it receives.

3.3 Newsletter (optional)

You can subscribe to our newsletter — about one email a month on what’s new in Tone Caliper. We use double opt-in: after you enter your email address we send you a confirmation link, and you are subscribed only once you confirm. Until you confirm, nothing is stored.

For subscribers we store your email address, your subscription status, and the time you confirmed, with our email provider (currently Resend). We use this only to send you the newsletter — never for advertising, profiling, or sharing with anyone else.

Every issue contains an unsubscribe link that takes effect immediately. You can also ask us to remove your address entirely at contact@tonecaliper.com (see Section 11).

4. The optional Community Service (recipe sharing)

The Community Service lets you browse, save, like, and publish editing “recipes.” It is optional. You can use Tone Caliper fully without it, and browsing and saving recipes do not require an account.

The Community Service runs on a third-party backend platform (currently Supabase).

4.1 Browsing and liking recipes

Browsing and saving recipes needs no account and tells us nothing about you. Liking a recipe does require a free account (Section 4.2) — one like per person is only enforceable if there is a person behind it.

4.2 Publishing recipes (account required)

To publish a recipe, you create an account using your email address (we use a magic-code / email login — we do not ask you to set a password). When you publish a recipe, the recipe data and any title or description you give it become publicly visible in the catalogue. Don’t publish anything you want to keep private.

4.3 What we process for the Community Service

• your email address (for publishing accounts and login);
• the recipes and metadata you publish (public by design);
• likes and similar interactions;
• basic technical logs needed to operate and secure the service.

You can ask us to delete your Community Service account and your published recipes (see Section 11).

5. Information we do not collect

• We do not collect or upload your photographs or your edits.
• We do not sell your personal information.
• We do not use your data for advertising or to build marketing profiles.
• We do not run editing-behavior telemetry unless you turn on usage analytics (Section 2.3).
• We do not create or store a persistent device identifier for analytics.

6. Payments

Purchases of Tone Caliper are processed by Polar (Polar Software Inc.), acting as our Merchant of Record (the seller of record for your purchase). Polar collects and processes your payment details (such as card information and billing details) and handles tax collection and invoicing.

We do not receive or store your full payment card details. We receive confirmation of a purchase and the information needed to issue and manage your license (such as your email address and order reference).

Details of completed purchases are also shared with the platform that runs our affiliate program, so that partner commissions can be calculated and reversed on refund. What is shared, and why it covers every purchase rather than only referred ones, is described in Section 3.4.

Polar is an independent controller of the payment data it collects. Please review Polar’s privacy policy for how it handles your information.

7. Service providers (processors) we rely on

We use a small number of reputable third parties to run the Services. They process data on our behalf, or as independent controllers where noted:

Some of these providers may process data on servers located outside Canada, including in the United States. Where we transfer personal data internationally, we rely on appropriate safeguards (such as standard contractual clauses or equivalent provider commitments).

8. Legal bases for processing (EEA/UK)

Where the EU/UK GDPR applies, we rely on the following legal bases:

• Performance of a contract — to provide the App, activate your license, and operate features you use (e.g., publishing a recipe you chose to publish).
• Legitimate interests — to operate, secure, and improve the Services (for example, anti-abuse measures, aggregate analytics, and enforcing licensing), balanced against your rights.
• Consent — for optional features such as usage analytics and the newsletter, and for any cookie-based analytics where required. You can withdraw consent at any time.
• Legal obligation — where we must retain records (for example, for tax).

9. Data retention

We keep personal data only as long as needed for the purposes described here:

• Licensing data — for the life of your license and as needed for support, fraud prevention, and tax/legal record-keeping.
• Contact correspondence — for as long as needed to handle and document your request.
• Community Service data — until you delete your account or published recipes, or as needed to operate the service.
• Newsletter subscription — until you unsubscribe or ask us to delete your address.
• Usage analytics (if enabled) — retained by our analytics provider for up to 5 years. It is aggregate event data, is not linked to an account, and cannot be traced back to your installation.

When data is no longer needed, we delete or anonymize it.

10. Security

We use reasonable technical and organizational measures to protect personal data, including reputable hosting and backend providers, access controls, and hashing of machine identifiers used for licensing. No system is perfectly secure, but the strongest protection here is structural: your photos and edits never leave your device in the first place.

11. Your rights and how to exercise them

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to:

• access the personal data we hold about you;
• correct inaccurate data;
• delete your data (including your Community Service account and published recipes);
• port your data;
• object to or restrict certain processing;
• withdraw consent for optional processing — turn usage analytics off in the App under Settings → General, or unsubscribe from the newsletter;
• opt out of the “sale” or “sharing” of personal information — we do not sell or share personal information in this sense.

To exercise any of these, email contact@tonecaliper.com. We may need to verify your identity. We respond within the timeframes required by applicable law.

• Canada (PIPEDA): You may also contact the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada.
• EEA/UK: You may lodge a complaint with your local data protection authority.
• California: You may exercise rights under the CCPA/CPRA, including access and deletion. We do not sell or share personal information as defined under that law.

12. Children

The Services are not directed to children. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under the age of 16 (or the minimum age in your jurisdiction). If you believe a child has provided us personal information, contact us and we will delete it.

13. Changes to this policy

We may update this policy from time to time. When we make material changes, we will update the “Last updated” date above and, where appropriate, provide additional notice. Continued use of the Services after an update means you accept the revised policy.

14. Contact

Questions about this policy or your data:

Light Year Interactive Inc.
387 Grindstone Trail, Oakville, L6H 0S1, ON, Canada
Email: contact@tonecaliper.com