Questions

The things people ask before they start.

If the honest answer is “not yet” or “it depends”, that is what you will find here.

Getting started

What actually is a Circle?: A private group of people connected by a person, event, place or shared history, together with everything they gather about it. The Circle decides who takes part. Albums and timelines organise what they build.
Do I need a lot of photos to start?: One is enough. A Circle built around a single photo that four people can talk about is more useful than a thousand nobody has annotated.
Who should I invite first?: Whoever can name the most people. Usually that is the oldest person who is still comfortable using a phone, or the relative everyone rings when there is a question about the family.
What if the people I want are not technical?: A viewer can join, look, listen and comment without doing anything else. Uploading, recording, organising and creating belong to the contributor role, which they never have to be given.

What happens to my original?: Nothing. It is kept exactly as it arrived and is never overwritten. Restoring or reframing produces a separate created version, labelled as created and linked back to the source.
What can restoration actually recover?: Creases, tears, scratches, dust, fading and colour casts, and a good deal of lost contrast. What it cannot do is invent detail that was never captured. A face that is four blurred pixels stays unknowable, and we would rather say so than produce a confident stranger.
Can I get a print out of it?: Yes. You can choose the aspect ratio a particular frame or album needs and prepare a high-quality version for printing. Cirluma does not sell prints; you take the file to whoever you like.
Will a created version ever be mistaken for the original?: It should not be. Created versions carry that status wherever they appear and stay linked to the source they came from, so anyone looking at the record later can tell which is which.

Can everyone in a Circle do everything?: No, and that is deliberate. A Circle has one owner, the person who created it, and they decide whether each member is a viewer or a contributor. A viewer looks, listens and comments. A contributor also adds material, stories and albums, and can restore and reframe.
Can I change what somebody can do later?: Yes. A Circle’s owner can move somebody between viewer and contributor, or remove them, at any time.
What if two people remember it differently?: Both accounts stay, each credited to the person who gave it. Cirluma does not force one official version of a memory, because the disagreement is often the interesting part.
Nobody is certain about the date. Is that a problem?: No. Approximate is a valid answer. A rough decade or a probable street is recorded as approximate rather than discarded, and can be sharpened later if somebody works it out.

Who can see what is in my Circle?: Only the people invited to it, and only in the ways their permission allows. Nothing is public unless somebody with permission deliberately makes it so.
Do you use what I upload to train anything?: Your photos and stories are yours. We do not treat a private Circle as a source of training material.
Can I delete things?: Yes. You can delete your own content and a Circle’s owner can delete the Circle. Consent records, security events and payment records are kept for the periods the law requires, held separately from your photos and stories. We would rather state that than promise an absolute nobody can deliver.
What happens if I stop paying?: Your Circle becomes read-only rather than being deleted, and your originals stay yours to export.

Is there an app?: Cirluma runs in a browser, and invitations open in the app where one is installed. Adding a photo or recording a voice story works from a phone.
How many people can be in a Circle?: There is no per-member charge and no cap that would make you leave somebody out. Inviting the person who remembers the most should never be a billing decision.
Can I have more than one Circle?: Yes. Many people end up with several: one per family branch, one for a friendship group, one for a particular event. How many a subscription carries is part of the commercial model still being settled, and the Pricing page says so plainly rather than guessing.
What if I want a case study made of ours?: We would like that. We are recruiting the first ones now, and every published element needs the permission of everybody in it.

Write to hello@cirluma.com. A person reads it.