Image Approvals Platform (App and SaaS Portal)
Image Approvals is a web and mobile platform for clearing film and TV unit stills with the cast: curated galleries, one-touch kills, automatic kill-allowance tracking and export to distributor spec. Scorchsoft designed, built and supports it.
Clearing stills at production scale
A feature drama can shoot several thousand unit stills, and every one of them needs sign-off from the actors who appear in it. Image Approvals publishes the following figures for the platform to date.
120+
Productions cleared
800+
Platform users
350,000+
Images processed
71%
Average approval rate
Online Talent Image Approval Platform (Web App)
Actors in film and television hold kill rights — a contractual allowance to reject a set number of photographs of themselves before the images can be published. Collecting those decisions used to mean emailing contact sheets around a cast and reconciling the replies by hand.
Image Approvals replaces that. Production staff tag who appears in each frame, and the platform sends every actor a gallery containing only their own images. The actor works through it one photograph at a time and taps Kill on anything they reject. The count against their allowance updates as they go, and the production sees the result immediately.
Because most of this happens on a phone between setups, the app is built mobile-first and works the same on a laptop back at the production office.
Inside the Image Approvals platform
Curated galleries, one-touch approvals, automatic kill tracking and a delivery-ready export — on a responsive web app that works on set.
Curate exactly what talent see
Before a cast member ever logs in, the production works through the day's take in its own view. Duplicates and frames that were never in contention are excluded outright, strong frames are starred as selects, and captions are added where a shot needs context.
Each tile carries its status as a single dot — killed, excluded, selected or captioned — so a reviewer can read the state of several hundred images by scanning rather than opening them. What reaches the actor is a deliberate selection, which is what keeps approval rates high and review time short.
One-touch approvals, wherever the cast are
An actor signs in and sees one thing: the images they appear in, grouped by shoot day. Unviewed, viewed and killed are separate tabs, so it is always obvious what is left to do, and the running kill count sits in the same line of the interface.
Approvals happen one frame at a time on a full-screen view with a single red Kill button and arrows to step through the set. When an actor finishes a day they mark it done, and the production can see who has and has not signed off without chasing anyone.
Automatic kill tracking
Kill allowances are the part of this process that is easy to get wrong by hand. Contracts commonly set different limits for solo shots and group shots, and a single photograph can count against several actors at once.
The platform does that arithmetic itself. Every kill is applied against the right allowance for the right person, totals are kept per day and across the whole production, and a full list shows what has been killed, what has been excluded and what is approved. Because the numbers are derived rather than typed in, they cannot drift out of step with the images.
Review at the speed of a contact sheet
Standard, compact and contact-sheet views trade image size against how much fits on screen. Contact sheet shows whole uncropped frames at a size the reviewer sets, which is how a stills editor is used to working.
Selecting across tiles turns on bulk actions, so a run of frames can be killed, starred, downloaded or have their filenames copied in one pass. For a day with a thousand images, that is the difference between an afternoon and a few minutes.
Secure access and delivery-ready export
Every user has their own password-protected account, and images are only served after sign-in — there are no shareable public links, and each viewer's ID and name are watermarked onto the images they see, so a leak can be traced back to a person.
At the end of a production, the approved set is exported for delivery: the unkilled images, plus contact sheets recording what was approved and what was killed. That export is what goes to the distributor, which makes the platform the audit trail as well as the workflow.
Every production in one place
Publicists and production companies rarely run one title at a time. The dashboard lists every production a user has access to, each with its own progress bar and counts of days, viewed, unviewed and killed images.
Role-based access decides what each person sees. An actor reaches only their own images; a unit photographer uploads through a secure link without an account; production staff and resellers see the titles they are entitled to and nothing else. One sign-in covers the lot, which is what makes the platform workable for an agency handling a slate of productions rather than a single shoot.
Frequently asked questions
A kill right is a contractual allowance that lets an actor reject a set number of photographs of themselves before those images can be published. Limits are usually expressed as a percentage or a fixed count, and solo shots and group shots are often governed by different allowances. Image Approvals tracks each allowance separately and applies every kill against the right one.
No. Production staff tag who appears in each frame, and an actor's gallery is filtered to those frames only. The wider take, including images still under review by the production, is never exposed to them.
Access is per-user and password-protected, and image URLs only resolve for a signed-in account, so nothing can be forwarded as a public link. Images are watermarked with the viewer's ID and name, which means any leaked frame identifies the account it came from.
Yes — the app is built mobile-first, because most approvals happen on a phone between setups rather than at a desk. The same interface scales up to a laptop for production staff working through a full day's take.
The approved set, exported to distributor specification, along with contact sheets recording which frames were approved and which were killed. That export doubles as the audit trail for the clearance process.
Yes. Image Approvals is a bespoke web app and SaaS portal we designed, built and continue to support. If you have a workflow that currently runs on spreadsheets and email, get a free quote or read more case studies.
More of our work
Read more case studies in our portfolio, see our capabilities, or contact Scorchsoft to talk about your own web app or SaaS portal project.
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Rebecca PalserDragonfly IntelligenceScorchsoft is a brilliant company with fantastic knowledge of the mobile app industry. From the project management to the development team, they have been the perfect candidate for our project, and we can't thank them enough!
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Daniel GreenSensTrainI'm really pleased with how my app came out, it was exactly what I was looking for. The team at Scorchsoft are great at what they do and made the whole process as simple and easy as possible. Being someone who is not very tech savvy the set up and back end operations were done in a great easy to use manner even for myself which makes using my app stress free. Thanks to all the team!
Ruben CarrollMosaic MasterpiecesThe new Flourish Education website has already removed a lot of manual processes, freeing up both schools, candidates and internal employees time. We are delighted with the look and feel which is clean, professional and more engaging. We are also pleased with the decision to have an HD video background on the homepage, and building immediate trust with our clients by giving them a taste of what it looks like in the Flourish Education offices.
James HancocksMarketing Manager, Flourish Education I can't believe how quickly we started to see results with this project. Scorchsoft provided us with graphic-designed mockups of how the app would look once built, and we were able to sell the product for use by our first customer before the product was finished. Since launching in March, we have secured a major television network as a client who now uses Image Approvals to manage the talent approval process for their productions.
Aimee SpinksMD, ImageApprovals.com
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