Build YearlyPhotos — the family photo calendar, AI-cleaned for print
Your year, your calendar — print-ready in minutes.
Most family photo books look stitched together from the camera roll. Awkward photos go in because there isn't a better one. Cluttered backgrounds, off-center subjects, portrait shots wedged into landscape spreads. The finished thing looks ok. It doesn't look like something you'd frame.
YearlyPhotos closes that gap. Drop a phone camera roll into the web app; the system clusters by date, surfaces the best frame per month, offers AI cleanup on the awkward ones, drops everything into a calendar template, and hands the buyer a print-ready /X-1a PDF they can take to any printer. V1 is the annual calendar. The same engine extends to holiday cards, baby's-first-year books, wedding albums, and travel books — but the calendar earns its first revenue first.
What the engine does
Drop your camera roll.
Drag-and-drop or pick from the phone. No account, no signup. The order resumes from an email link if the upload stalls.
Auto-sorted by month.
EXIF dates and perceptual similarity group the camera roll into twelve months and surface the best frame per spread. Swap from each month's pool if you want a different pick.
Firefly cleans the awkward ones.
Cluttered backdrop, blurry edge, portrait wedged into landscape — Adobe Firefly fills the awkward part of the photo without you having to find a better one.
A PDF any printer accepts.
Document Generation lays out the calendar, the Photoshop API polishes each photo, PDF Services exports `/X-1a` print-ready. Take it to any print-on-demand or local print shop.
Five Adobe APIs, doing real work
- FIREFLYThemed backgrounds and generative fill on awkward photos. The differentiator.
- PHOTOSHOP APIServer-side batch auto-tone, smart crop to template slots, brand frame overlay.
- DOC GENERATIONTemplate + JSON payload → finished calendar layout. The 2020s mail-merge.
- PDF SERVICESPrint-ready `/X-1a` export. Vendor-agnostic — the buyer prints wherever they like.
- PDF EMBEDIn-browser preview so the buyer sees the finished calendar before paying.
The Adobe APIs earn their slot when they're earning a buyer, not a portfolio.
Pay-before-render — why the unit economics work
Every paid Adobe call fires after Stripe Checkout completes. Pre-checkout, the buyer gets exactly one Firefly preview on a photo of their choice — the moment they see the magic and decide to pay. Photoshop API, Document Generation, and PDF Services only fire when there's revenue on the order.
Raw Adobe spend per book: $0.25–$2.50. Retail $19–49. Gross margin 90%+. No login required, no credit-burn surface, no unit-economics inversion under griefing. ADR-0002 carries the full reasoning.
What's next
The repo is scaffolded, the spec is locked, and the twelve-phase generation plan is on the board. Phase 0 — the runnable shell — kicks off next. Q4 holiday window is the launch deadline: by mid-October, every "make Christmas gifts" search should find a real product if it's going to convert.
The pivot post that named this product: a memory-books studio.
Your year, made worth framing.