Policies

Terms and conditions

What you buy when you buy shepherd, and what shepherd owes you in return.

October 2026

1Who you are dealing with

shepherd is made by the provider named in the legal notice, called "shepherd" throughout this document, and "I" where a person is doing the answering. It is sold through Creem, which is the seller on your invoice; section 5 explains who is responsible for what.

Write to hello@shepherd.photo. I read and answer support mail myself, in English and German, usually within a couple of working days.

2What these terms cover

These terms apply to every licence for the shepherd desktop application bought through shepherd.photo. They do not cover anything else you might buy from anyone else, and they are the whole agreement between us together with the refund policy and the privacy policy.

Your own terms of business do not apply, even if you send them with an order, unless I have agreed to them in writing (such as for bulk orders).

The contract language is German. The English variant is a translation for reference purposes. Both versions are kept in step.

3What shepherd is

shepherd is a desktop application for Windows, macOS and Linux that groups a shoot into bursts, proposes a keeper in each, and writes your ratings back as metadata into XMP sidecar files or, from the package Flock upwards, into the image file itself.

The analysis runs on your own computer. shepherd needs no account and no upload, and no photograph, filename or folder name is sent anywhere. The one thing that talks to a server is the licence, described in section 6.

shepherd proposes and you decide. Nothing is written to your files that you have not confirmed, and originals are never modified without an explicit backup first.

4Packages, prices and what a package includes

The price is the one shown in the packages section at the moment you order, in euro, paid once. Whether VAT is shown separately, and at which rate, depends on where you are buying from; the checkout works it out and the invoice states it. There is no charge per photo, per shoot or per month.

Every package contains the same program and the same analysis, with no performance limit, no watermark and no limit on photos or shoots. The packages differ in the features listed on the packages section and in how many computers one key covers.

One year of updates is included, counted from the day you buy: every release of your major version that comes out within that year is yours. After that year shepherd keeps working exactly as it did; updates stopping is not the licence expiring.

A new major version needs a new licence, at a discount for existing customers. A release that comes out after your year, or belongs to a newer major version, will not run on your licence. shepherd says so and points you to your download page, where every build your licence covers stays available. Reinstalling one of those is always possible; nothing you were entitled to is taken back.

Moving up a package later costs the difference and nothing else. Write to me and I will sort it out.

5How the contract comes about

The packages on shepherd.photo are an invitation to buy, not a binding offer. You make the offer by completing the checkout; the contract comes about when the order is confirmed and your licence key is issued. That normally happens within a minute or two.

Payment is handled by Creem, which sells the licence to you as reseller and merchant of record and issues the invoice. Creem's own terms apply to the payment itself, alongside these terms for the licence and the software. Payment methods are the ones Creem offers at checkout.

Your key arrives by email at the address you paid with, in the shape SHEPHERD-XXXXX-XXXXX-XXXXX, together with your personal download link. There is no public download: that link is your copy of the program. It stays valid for a year, and I send a fresh one whenever you ask. If the email has not arrived within ten minutes, check the spam folder, then write to me with your order reference.

6The licence, and how activation works

You get a non-exclusive, perpetual right to use shepherd, for private or commercial photography alike, on as many computers as your package covers: one for Field, two for Flock and Range. There is no separate commercial licence to buy: culling paid work is what shepherd is for.

The licence does not expire. Activation happens once per machine and needs an internet connection. After that shepherd culls offline, and re-confirms the licence in the background about once a day whenever a connection is there.

Offline use has a limit: shepherd has to reach the licence server at least once every 10 days. It warns you after 2 days without a successful check, and locks after 10 days, or after 15 starts without one, until it can check in again. Any single successful check resets all of that. A shoot abroad or a week in a cabin is fine; a machine that never goes online is not.

Activation and re-confirmation send the key, a device fingerprint, the computer's operating system and the app version. No photograph, filename or folder name is ever sent. See the privacy policy.

If you replace a machine, release its slot from inside the app and activate the new one. Reinstalling the operating system counts as a new machine too. Either way, if the old slot could not be released first, write to me and I will free it.

If the licence server cannot be reached for longer than that window, shepherd locks until it can check in again. Your photos, your ratings and your XMP sidecar files are on your disk in open formats and stay readable without shepherd.

Should I ever shut the licence service down for good, I will first publish a final release that no longer needs it, so the licence you bought keeps running.

7What the licence does not allow

• Passing on, publishing, reselling or sharing your key, or using one key beyond the number of computers your package covers.
• Renting shepherd out, or running it as a service for third parties.
• Circumventing, patching out or faking the licence check.
• Removing copyright notices or the open-source acknowledgements shown under Settings → About.
• Decompiling or reverse-engineering shepherd, except where the law expressly allows it, in particular for interoperability, and for correcting errors.

shepherd stays mine: buying a licence buys the right to use the program, not the program itself or any part of its source.

If a key is shared or a licence check is tampered with, I may block that key. For anything less clear-cut I will write to you first.

8What your computer has to do

shepherd needs a reasonably modern Windows, macOS or Linux machine. Recommended are at least 8 GB of RAM and a quad-core processor at 3 GHz or more, and the analysis gets faster with every bit beyond that. Some RAW formats do not carry all the metadata the analysis would like. Where a value is missing, shepherd says so rather than guessing.

If you are not sure whether your camera or your machine is a fit, ask before you buy. Send me the camera model, and a sample image if you can, and I will tell you straight.

9Updates and support

Support is by email, answered by me personally. There is no guaranteed response time, and no obligation to add a feature, keep a format working forever, or support an operating system version after its own maker has dropped it.

Updates within your included year are offered as they are released. Installing one is your decision; shepherd does not update itself behind your back.

10Open-source and third-party components

shepherd is built on open-source software and fonts. They are listed with their licences under Settings → About in the app, and their licence terms apply to those components rather than these terms. Which third-party components decide what shepherd can read, decode, store or infer is also listed there.

11If something is wrong with it

Your statutory rights apply in full. If shepherd does not do what it is supposed to do, tell me and I will fix it, replace it, or give you your money back. In that order of preference.

Software has bugs. What I do not warrant is that shepherd is free of them, that it will run without interruption, or that its suggestions match your taste. shepherd proposes a keeper; whether a frame is actually good is your call, and no clause here turns a suggestion into a promise about the result.

Keep backups of your photographs. shepherd works in place, copies nothing, and never writes to an original without backing it up first, but a culling tool is not a backup strategy and no software is a substitute for one.

12Liability

I am liable without limit for damage caused intentionally or by gross negligence, for injury to life, body or health, and wherever the law allows no limit.

For ordinary negligence I am liable only where a duty essential to this contract has been breached, and then only for the damage typically foreseeable in a contract of this kind. Liability for anything else caused by ordinary negligence is excluded.

For lost data, my liability is limited to the effort of restoring it from backups that were properly kept.

13Withdrawal, refunds, and the absence of a subscription

shepherd is not a subscription. There is no renewal, no invoice next month and nothing to cancel. The licence you bought is the licence you keep.

Consumers have a statutory right of withdrawal, which comes with the purchase from Creem. On top of it, shepherd gives everyone a 14-day money-back guarantee, no reason needed. See the refund policy.

14Changes to these terms

I may change these terms for future purchases; the version in force is the one published here when you buy, and the version line at the top of the page says which that is. Changes never apply retroactively to a licence you already own.

15Law, courts, and complaints

German law applies. If you are a consumer, that choice does not take away the protections of the mandatory law of the country you live in.

For business customers, the courts at Stuttgart, Germany, have exclusive jurisdiction.

I am not obliged, and have chosen not, to take part in dispute resolution before a consumer arbitration board. That does not affect your right to go to court, or to complain to a supervisory authority about how your data is handled.

16The rest

If one clause here turns out to be invalid, the others stay in force. Amendments to this contract need to be in writing, email included.

Questions about any of this go to hello@shepherd.photo. I would rather answer a question than have you guess.