Multi-Photographer Marketplace Development

# PhotoX – Development Scope PhotoX is a **professional multi-photographer marketplace** for South Africa, initially focused on school sport, sporting events and event photography. The system must be scalable to support **hundreds of photographers, thousands of galleries and millions of images**. ## Core Requirements ### Photographer Platform Approved photographers must have accounts where they can: * Create events and galleries * Bulk upload thousands of images * Set pricing * View sales, commission and payouts * Manage public profiles * View gallery and sales analytics ### Galleries & Events Events must support multiple photographers, sports, teams, age groups and matches. Images remain linked to the photographer who uploaded them. ### AI Search A major requirement is automated image search using: * **Facial recognition/search** * **Bib number recognition** * **Jersey/player number recognition** * OCR/computer vision * Automatic AI image tagging Customers should be able to upload a face, enter a number or use filters to quickly locate relevant photographs. ### Image Processing The platform must support: * High-volume uploads * Cloud image storage * Automatic thumbnails/previews * Watermarking * Secure high-resolution originals * CDN delivery * Background image/AI processing ### Marketplace & Payments Customers must be able to purchase: * High-resolution downloads * Social-media versions * Image bundles * Free sponsor-branded downloads Primary currency: **ZAR**. The system must integrate with suitable SA payment gateways such as PayFast, Peach Payments, Paystack or equivalent. PhotoX commission must be calculated automatically, with photographer earnings, refunds and payouts recorded. ### Sponsor System Admin must be able to manage advertising across: * Homepage * Search results * Galleries * Image preview pages * Emails Including campaign scheduling, impressions, clicks and reporting. ### Admin Central dashboard for: * Photographers/users * Events/galleries/images * Orders/payments * Commissions/payouts * Sponsors/advertising * Coupons/refunds * Analytics ### Technical Requirements The system must be: * Mobile-first * POPIA-aware * Secure * Cloud-based * API-ready * Designed for millions of images * Built so additional services can be added later ## Phase 1 Flow **Photographer → Event → Bulk Upload → AI Processing → Face/Bib/Jersey Search → Gallery → Customer Search → Checkout → Payment → Digital Delivery → Commission → Photographer Reporting** ## Quote Required Please include: * Development cost * Development timeline * Proposed technology stack * AI/computer vision solution * Cloud/storage/CDN architecture * Payment architecture * Third-party costs * Estimated monthly hosting costs * Support/maintenance options * IP/source-code ownership The objective is to build a scalable professional photography marketplace where thousands of images can be uploaded and customers can **find themselves in seconds**.