PawPrint

From shelter photo to adoption campaign in minutes.

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Inspiration

Animal shelters across Canada take in tens of thousands of animals every year, and many shelters are seeing increased pet surrenders due to rising living costs. At the same time, most people now begin their pet search online before visiting a shelter. This means that the first impression of an animal is usually a photo on the internet.

However, shelter volunteers often take quick phone photos in difficult environments — fluorescent lighting, kennel bars, and moving animals. Volunteers also rarely have time to edit photos, crop images for multiple platforms, or create social media campaigns for every pet.

We were inspired to build PawPrint to solve this visibility gap. Our goal was to create a tool that allows volunteers to upload a few photos and instantly generate a complete adoption campaign so that every shelter animal has a better chance of being seen and adopted.

What it does

PawPrint turns a simple upload into a full adoption campaign.

A shelter volunteer fills out a short form with basic information about a pet and uploads several photos (and optionally a short video). PawPrint then automatically:

  • Grades the photos and selects the best hero image
  • Enhances images using AI-powered transformations
  • Generates optimized versions for different social media platforms
  • Creates a shareable pet profile page
  • Generates downloadable social media packages (e.g., PetNameTwitter.zip, PetNameInstagram.zip)
  • Produces a printable kennel card with a QR code linking to the pet’s profile

Instead of volunteers editing images or designing posts themselves, PawPrint generates ready-to-post assets and a complete adoption profile in minutes.

How we built it

We built PawPrint as a web application designed for speed and simplicity.

The frontend is built with React, allowing us to quickly create a responsive interface where volunteers can upload files and preview results.

Images and videos are uploaded directly to Cloudinary, where we use a pipeline of transformations to analyze and enhance media. This includes:

  • Image quality analysis to grade photos
  • AI restoration and enhancement
  • Smart cropping for multiple aspect ratios
  • Background removal and replacement
  • Video reframing for multiple platforms

After processing, the application automatically generates a profile page for the animal and packages platform-specific assets into downloadable ZIP files.

We also implemented QR code generation so shelters can place a printed kennel card beside the animal’s enclosure that links directly to the pet’s online profile.

Challenges we ran into

One challenge was dealing with inconsistent image quality. Shelter photos can be blurry, dark, or obstructed by cage bars, so we had to design a pipeline that improves images without making them look unnatural.

Another challenge was supporting multiple social media formats. Each platform requires different aspect ratios and resolutions, so we needed to automatically generate several versions of the same media while keeping the subject properly framed.

We also had to ensure the workflow stayed simple and fast for volunteers, since the goal of PawPrint is to remove work rather than add more steps.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that PawPrint transforms a complicated marketing task into a single, streamlined workflow.

With just a short form and a few uploads, the system produces:

  • An optimized adoption profile
  • Social media assets for multiple platforms
  • A QR-enabled kennel card
  • Downloadable media packages ready to share

We are especially proud of how the system combines multiple media transformations into one automated pipeline that requires almost no manual editing.

What we learned

Through building PawPrint we learned how to design a complete automated media workflow rather than just a single tool.

We learned how image analysis and AI transformations can be combined to improve real-world content, and how important presentation and discoverability are when people search for pets online.

We also learned that building impactful technology often means simplifying workflows for the people who need it most, in this case shelter volunteers.

What's next for PawPrint

There are several directions we would like to take PawPrint in the future.

We would like to integrate with adoption platforms so profiles can automatically sync with major pet adoption websites. We also want to add analytics so shelters can see which pets are getting the most views and engagement.

Other future features include:

  • Automated posting to social media platforms
  • Batch processing for entire shelter intake days
  • AI-generated adoption descriptions
  • Integration with shelter management systems

Our long-term vision is for PawPrint to become a complete digital adoption marketing platform for shelters, helping more animals find homes faster.

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