Credit Lifecycle & Zero-Cost Ingestion

Transparent Studio Accounting

BestShots manages analysis credits through a transparent accounting system built specifically for professional photography studios. You maintain complete control over when credits are spent, and you are never charged for routine workspace management or file uploads.

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Zero-Cost Ingestion Guarantee

To protect your operational budget, BestShots strictly separates project management, file ingestion, and AI compute execution:

• Step 1 (Project Setup · 100% Free): Creating projects, assigning shoot genres, setting culling priorities, and organizing your catalog is completely free with zero credit requirements.
• Step 2 (Photo Upload & Manual Culling · 100% Free): Uploading camera RAW and JPEG files is completely free. Fast local processing creates high-resolution preview proxies and transmits them to your encrypted cloud vault without consuming a single credit. You can upload, organize, and manually cull thousands of images at zero cost.
• Step 3 (Automated AI Curation · 1 Credit per Frame): Credits are only deducted when you explicitly choose to run automated AI quality scoring and burst curation by clicking Run Analysis.

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The Credit Deduction Lifecycle

When you initiate automated AI analysis, your credits follow a clear, protected lifecycle:

1. Email Verification: New accounts receive 100 free credits upon email verification, with no credit card required.
2. Deduction on Active Processing: When you submit photos for AI evaluation, the exact number of credits matching your photo count is deducted from your studio balance.
3. Duplicate Charge Protection: If your internet connection briefly drops while submitting a batch, built-in submission verification ensures you are never charged twice for the same photo.

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Automatic Failure Reconciliation & Instant Refunds

If an analysis job encounters an unrecoverable issue (such as a corrupted camera sensor file, unreadable payload, or cloud network timeout):

• Automatic Error Detection: The processing engine catches the failure immediately and marks the affected frame status.
• Instant Credit Refund: The system automatically initiates a compensating refund, returning the exact deducted credit back to your account balance within zero seconds.
• Clear Activity History: A clear record is added to your studio activity log detailing the refund reason and identifying the specific photo.