Aphera Blog

Beta 13 Released

2026-05-14T16:00:00Z

A new beta version has been released.

Heads up: First-launch migration

Aphera now runs outside the macOS sandbox, which means the app’s internal data moves from ~/Library/Containers/… to standard locations inside ~/Library/…. On first launch, Beta 13 migrates your existing data to the new locations. It takes just a moment, and your projects and settings should be unaffected. Please contact us (hello@aphera.co) if you see anything out of the ordinary.

Projects window

The Projects window has been expanded and fixed to accurately show everything in your configured projects folder. Open existing projects, create new ones, and see each project’s cover image at a glance. Sort projects by name or last opened.

Project Cover Image

Each project now has a cover image used in the Projects window and in QuickLook previews. Right-click any photo in a project and choose Use as Cover Image to set it. By default, the cover is the highest rated, oldest photo.

QuickLook for projects

Aphera project packages now preview in Finder via QuickLook. Select a project file and press Space to see its cover image without opening the app.

Look shortcuts toggle

Keys 6 through 0 now toggle the assigned Look. Press the key once to apply, press again to remove. Previously these keys only applied the Look.

Toggle Rejected

Option+Delete now toggles the rejected flag on the selection. Press once to reject, press again to clear back to unrated. When the selection is mixed, all selected photos are set to rejected.

Other changes

Drop images on the Dock icon while a project is open to import directly into that project.
Clicking the dock icon when no windows are open shows the Projects window
Fixed some rough edges in macOS full screen and Lightbox

Beta 12 Released

2026-04-24T16:00:00Z

A new beta version has been released. This one refines where your projects live, how they’re named, and how exports are configured.

New Project Setup

Open Settings (Cmd+,) to choose where projects are stored and how they’re named. New projects are saved to disk the moment you create them, and auto-save as you work — no manual Save needed.

Workflows, Simplified

We have a big vision for Workflows in Aphera, but we’ve heard from many of you that the current feature is confusing. We’ve trimmed it back to a simple Exports feature.

In Settings, you can create any number of Export Presets — where to save files, how to name them, how to version, plus all the image format settings you already had. Three are built in to get you going: Archival, Web, and Social.

A preset can be setup to write to each project’s Exports folder (good for project-specific output) or to a fixed global location (good for sending all your client deliveries or social posts to the same Dropbox).

Each project remembers the last used preset. Select your images, hit Cmd+E, and the exports go out.

Naming Patterns

Both Project and Export Settings now have a Naming Pattern field where you shape filenames and folders using tokens like {date}, {filename}, or {preset}. It’s a powerful way to set up your on-disk files just the way you want. A few favorites for power users:

Per-Project

{preset}/{filename}-{version}.{ext} – Keep each version exported for comparing the changes.
{preset}/{seq}-{filename}.{ext} – The order on disk matches your selection.
{preset}/v{version}/{filename}.{ext} – Each exported batch goes in a separate folder.

Global Exports (Desktop, Dropbox, etc)

{filename}.{ext} – Drop everything into one folder
{project}/{filename}.{ext} – Drop everything into a folder by project
{year}/{project}/{filename}.{ext} – Keep the final export by year and project (with Overwrite mode)
{year}/{project}/{filename}-{version}.{ext} – Keep all of your exports by year and project

The full set is in the docs. Let us know which other tokens you’d like to use.

Improvements to Import

Use the folder’s name to create a Group. If you import a single folder of images, we’ll create a Group with that name.

If you shoot RAW+JPG, the import process now only brings in the RAW file to Aphera. We think that’s the right thing most of the time, so please let us know if you have a different workflow in mind.

Disallow importing from an SD card. Since Aphera always references files on disk, this probably isn’t what you want. A full import/ingest tool is in the works.

Beta 11 Released

2026-04-17T15:25:16Z

A new beta version has been released, a small set of fixes on the heels of Beta 10.

Drag and drop images (or a folder) to the Dock icon to import
Fix potential crash when saving a project
Fix the minimum window size to not squish the layout
Fix a slightly soft rendering of images in the main view
Fix a slightly soft rendering when grain is applied

Beta 10 Released

2026-04-14T20:25:16Z

Beta 10 is another huge update — over two weeks of intense work from the three of us that lays down a solid foundation for the app that we can grow into and improve. It’s feeling like home.

Unified UI

The three spaces you know today have been simplified. Grid for reviewing and acting on images in quantity, Quick for flowing through a selection or subset of images with your editing workflows (Balance + Looks), and Detail for going deeper into a single image to develop it further.

These ideas and modes of operating felt analogous to these distinct spaces, but as we used it more and heard from you, we realized we needed to bring things closer together. Why weren’t Looks and Balance in Grid? The keyboard controls worked, but why were those controls only visible in Quick?

Keeping these spaces distinct felt more like work than flow, so we unified Grid and Quick. Balance and Look tools (we call them internally, chiclets) are now present in Grid, which we consider the default view. Working through an image is now much more seamless — size up your grid, filter starred selections, or select batches of images. And now, double-click an image to bring it to a singular isolated view and work on it in context of your project’s groups, starred, and workflows.

Detail is still where the work happens, and we now call it Develop. Duh! An obvious name for when you want to further work on an image with effects or develop your Looks. No major changes here (but a Develop V2 is on the roadmap). You can now access Develop by hitting Enter/Return (or the big button on the bottom right). Esc to exit back to Grid, or hit Enter again to isolate the image in Grid.

The toolbar provides navigation between Grid, Develop, and Crop, while displaying real-time project status.

There’s one other way to get to Develop, which is the other new addition: the top toolbar. It’s both navigation and an informational readout. You can access Grid, Develop, and Crop from here on the left. The right side shows you the status of your project. It’ll show you the images and selection ranges, Export, and Import status. Click to toggle through each state, and the disclosure caret will give you live updates if any combination of the three are active.

Lightbox

We’ve added a Lightbox view, the L key toggles it. Lightbox is a very fast way to isolate an image in full-screen with no UI and just metadata. All the keyboard tools work here, so think of this as a better version of Quick + Focus. If you have a second display, you can place the Lightbox there as a large reference while accessing the rest of the project.

More UI changes

We changed the delete key slightly. In beta 9 pressing delete would always set the image to Rejected. In practice we found this to be unexpected when inside a Group or Workflow. Now, delete will remove an image from its Group or Workflow when in those views. The heavier operation of Reject is now option-delete and works in all contexts.

The Balance tools now correctly return to “no change” when you increase by several steps and then decrease by an equal number of steps. Previously the value would be effectively zero but still show a “modified” state in the UI.

The Balance tool also gained a right click (context menu) allowing you to Reset each control.

The Crop tool now has an orientation button for correcting the overall rotation of an image.

Changes to image rendering

We made two changes to the Grain tool: the default value for “Blend > Overall” which controls the visible effect of the grain is now lower. We think this is a better starting place when adding grain on most images. Note that any grain settings in existing projects will be honored but you might wish to explore the more subtle behavior of the “Blend > Overall” slider. We also modified the grain itself, in subtle ways that you may or may not notice.

The performance of Denoise is improved; previously using this tool could slow down the overall image rendering speed and cause the UI to feel slow.

Lens Corrections have been upgraded; your cameras should be identified more correctly now.

Disk, memory, and performance

Upon import, Aphera creates several proxy images to avoid the time-consuming process of decoding and debayering a RAW file. We now require fewer of these images over time as you edit, saving disk space. Additionally, we put a limit on the total size of this proxy cache, currently 10GB (tools to change that or clean it up will be coming).

When those proxy files are missing, Aphera now more efficiently creates them as needed. Previously this regeneration step could cause the app to slow and consume too much memory.

Several other fixes have been put in place to keep memory usage under control; we generally see it stabilize around 6GB once an import has completed.

The UI layer which displays images on screen has been revamped to reduce memory usage and be much more efficient. It should feel noticeably snappier when moving moving between images. Rapid movement such as holding down the right arrow key shows a significant improvement.

How We Redesigned Culling

2026-03-23T17:30:28Z

In the beginning, there were stars.

…and there were also picks, flags, colors, rejects, tags, and more.

Across photo management software, people use all of these culling tools to identify and organize their best photos. With so many options, we see a wide variety of patterns in use. We knew Aphera needed powerful culling tools, but which systems should we add?

In early development we added many of the common culling tools, but for the private beta we simplified Aphera to the simplest option: Faves. The hypothesis for this was “how much culling do people need?” Is a single signal enough for a photographer to organize their shoot? The Apple Photos app works this way: a single way to Favorite your photos. When Ryan and Naz were at VSCO, they found that due to this limitation, users culled from Camera Roll → Favorites → VSCO Studio. Exporting to share was the final approval.

Left: Mid-2025 Aphera with many culling tools. Right: Early 2026, simplified to Faves.

Follow the user

With Aphera on macOS, we’re dropping a new tool right into the middle of a huge variety of existing workflows. We heard quickly from beta testers that they missed stars. Coming from Lightroom primarily, but also other apps like Capture One, Photo Mechanic, and even Aperture, we realized that we needed more nuanced culling tools. But to what degree?

Some of the answers were found in our beta group: we heard over and over about using stars. In different ways, though mostly as a tool for doing multiple rounds of refinement.

My process of culling is that I do one pass and assign 1 star, then do another pass and do 2 stars, and so on. I missed that here a bit because unfaving a photo felt destructive.
Marcin Wichary

Stars to cull (2 or 3 stars). Stars to cull again (4 stars). Develop the 4 stars to find the feel. Stars to cull (5 stars).
Troy Sandal

1 star: potential, 2 stars: I know it's going to be a banger. Reject would be REALLY nice, a main part of my workflow is to delete the cruft.
Al Power

Sometimes stars are given special meaning:

Different stars for different purposes. 3 stars for website, 4 stars for emails, 5 stars make it to social.
Tyler Nutter

Follow the data

Another set of answers came from researching other apps and data formats. As expected, we didn’t find much consensus.

	XMP Spec	Lightroom	Capture One	Photo Mechanic	Bridge
Stars	`xmp:Rating 1-5`	✓	✓	✓	✓
Pick	`xmpDM:pick`	Flag (`xmpDM:pick` since 2024)	Session Selects (file move)	Tag (proprietary XMP)	None
Color Labels	`xmp:Label` (text)	5 colors	8 colors	9 classes	5 colors
Reject	`xmp:Rating = -1`	Flag (`xmpDM:pick` since 2024)	Session Trash (file move)	Trash (Color Label)	✓

We can see that Stars are universally supported, with xmp:Rating representing them well. The other options are filled with problems:

With multiple axes come contradictions: in Lightroom, you can have a photo that’s 5-star AND rejected.
Color labels are notoriously fragile across apps — they’re stored as text strings, and if the text doesn’t match between apps, the color doesn’t display.
Flags are worse: Lightroom only started writing them to XMP in 2024, and Bridge uses an entirely different mechanism for rejects.
Photo Mechanic’s Tag — the standard for speedy culling — writes a proprietary value, so users who care about interop end up relying on stars for a durable rating.
Capture One doesn’t have flags at all — users migrating from Lightroom end up repurposing color tags as a workaround, mixing two systems that weren’t designed to work together.

So what is this xmp:Rating? We can learn its intent from the XMP Specification:

A user-assigned rating for this file. The value shall be -1 or in the range [0…5], where -1 indicates “rejected” and 0 indicates “unrated”. If xmp:Rating is not present, a value of 0 should be assumed. NOTE: Anticipated usage is for a typical “star rating” UI, with the addition of a notion of rejection.

A single value that can represent both star ratings and rejections? That’s exactly what we want.

Design

The answer was clear: Stars backed by xmp:Rating perfectly lined up with both user requests and data standards. The question became how do we design a simpler experience around XMP Rating? How could we add stars without losing the simplicity of the Fave?

The first insight came by looking at XMP Rating as categories:

No Signal (0)
Signal + Strength (1-5)
Rejected (-1)

With this view, we can turn seven signals (-1 0 1 2 3 4 5) into three: Rejected, No Stars, and Starred.

In previous versions of Aphera, Faves was binary — on or off. Starred replaces it with a view of anything with a star set. To respect the hierarchy, we group photos by their rating, and changing a rating within this view elegantly moves the photo between groups.

Stars are grouped by rating, making it easy to see your culling progress.

By showing all ratings in a single view, users can use stars however they like: thinking like Favorites? Use 1-star. Doing a multi-pass refinement? Use whatever number feels right as you progress. The Starred view shows everything you’ve given a signal.

The Rejected view shows the inverse: photos you don’t want to see again. When a photo is rejected, it’s hidden from all other views. It’s like a soft delete, so we don’t need an additional “trash” or other features.

Keyboard

Keyboard control is critical for a fast workflow, so why fight the obvious? We assigned keys 1-5 to set a star.

To remove stars (No Signal), we opted for the ~ key, which neatly sits to the left of 1, an easy reach when keeping your right hand on the arrow keys.
To Reject, we decided on the delete key. It just feels good to hit delete.

Filters, Groups, and Workflows

Stars join two other tools for organization in Aphera: Groups and Workflows. Both of these tools now have a filter allowing you to focus in on any set of stars.

Use the star filter to focus on specific ratings in Groups and Workflows.

Groups are a lightweight way to collect photos for any reason. Separate your photos by location? Looking for portraits? Groups can do that.
Workflows act as buckets for processing and export. Sharing to social? Saving full size JPGs? Workflows collect those photos along with the settings to get it done.

In terms of culling, we think Workflows tie it all together. Where we see users giving meaning to a specific star rating (“5-star goes to the client”) or color tag (“red is ready to print”) we offer Workflows. Workflows free you from using star ratings consistently across your entire catalog. Instead, you can use them however feels appropriate for the current culling task. For example in a Lightroom Catalog, if 5-star means client pick, you’re stuck with that meaning forever. In Aphera, stars are local to each project, and Workflows handle what happens next.

Compatibility

We want Aphera to sit comfortably within whatever tools and workflows you currently use. By building our culling system on top of XMP Rating, we get a solid foundation for interoperability. Aphera will use an existing rating on import (with xmp sidecar support in the works), and on export we can simply write the value. When importing from tools with other signals (Apple Photos’ Favorite, color tags, even keywords) we can map them to a specific star rating, group, or workflow. Those features will continue to evolve.

Stars all the way

The new Starred feature extends Faves with a meaningfully more nuanced system for culling. We’ve designed it to work across a variety of tools and workflows, while keeping the experience simple.

Beta 9 Released

2026-03-21T02:25:16Z

A new beta version has been released. This one is absolutely massive.

Stars and Grid

We’ve redesigned the photo grid and culling system.

We’ve replaced Faves with Starred. You can now use standard 1-5 keys to mark each photo with a star rating. Use ~ to remove any stars.
The Starred view shows all starred photos, grouped by their star rating.
The Rejected view holds photos you’ve rejected (delete key)
All views now have a new filter at the bottom to show photos based on their star rating
The grid has been rebuilt from scratch to be beautiful and performant for 1000s of photos
The grid shows metadata (name, camera settings, stars), which can be toggled with /
The logic for maintaining scroll position and selection across view changes has seen many improvements

Looks

We’ve replaced the Aphera Standard look with Base. Base is Aphera’s default rendering (“no edits”). We think it’s lovely on its own and a better starting point for your own creative decisions.

Look shortcuts have been moved to 6-0 keys to make space for star ratings at 1-5
The Base look is assigned to the - key (next to 0)
The [ and ] keys are used to cycle through all looks.

Crop

We’ve added several requested features:

Crop overlays (thirds, quarters, and fine grid)
Cursor changes to indicate drag and straighten gestures
Improved interactions for many crop and straighten movements
New toolbar design in crop mode

Other Changes

Background color shortcuts moved from [ ] keys to < > keys. This aligns with the / key for grid settings
In existing projects, Looks assigned to numbers 6-9 have been moved to the More Looks section
More consistent delete key behavior: delete rejects, option-delete removes from view, and command-delete removes from the project
Fixed broken TIFF and PNG exports
Improved metadata for all export formats
Improved compatibility with obscure DNG formats
Fixed some LUT formats that failed to import
Actions like change Balance, set Look, and set Star require a selected photo
Additional toast messages for many actions
The View and Photo menu have been reorganized to better represent the new features

Look Management

In Detail, right click on a Look for Export Look allowing you to save it to disk.
Added File > Import Looks to load looks you’ve saved.

New Cameras

We’ve added support for the following cameras:

Canon EOS R1
Canon EOS R5 Mark II
Nikon Z6 3
Sony A1M2
Sony FX2
Sony ZV-E10M2

Beta 8 Released

2026-02-26T22:43:23Z

Another week, another release.

Beta 8 brings bug fixes:

Import: Fix that drag and drop files worked inconsistently (not being able to add more after an initial import)
Export: Removed unnecessary raw metadata which could cause conflicts with the exported data such as the Finder preview
Export: Set the Software field to “Aphera”
Export: Set the exported time which should improve sorting in some applications

Beta 7 Released

2026-02-24T22:43:23Z

Smaller release but very important bug fixes and quality of life bits:

Fixed that custom export locations (outside Project folder) almost always failed
Fixed that Un-Faving an image in Quick Mode would un-fave all selected images, not just the visible one
Canceling an import no longer removes all the photos, plus confirms that you do wish to cancel

Thanks beta testers, we love seeing the app getting used.

Beta 6 Released

2026-02-20T22:43:23Z

A new beta version has been released. Some big ones in here:

Sony a7 V is now supported (Lossless Compressed mode only)
Balance now displays Temperature and Tint in Kelvin
Balance now displays the real Exposure value
Undo now works for selection and navigation
Toast messages for Fave, Export Completed, and more
Context menu for all images (Show in Finder, Fave, add to Group or Workflow)
Added links to Documentation to Help menu and toolbar

Improved image view interactions

Zoom in only occurs if you click the image
Trackpad can be used to pan on a zoomed image
Cursor changes to indicate zoom or drag
Toast messages for magnification changes

Tahoe Fixes

Drag and drop within the app now works consistently
Clicking the Grid/Quick/Detail buttons is more consistent

More Fixes

Fixed that some images formats did not export their EXIF metadata
Fix that Fave modified all selected images when in Quick/Detail modes

In The Wild

2026-02-19T22:43:23Z

Image taken and edited by Tyler Nutter with Aphera.

We’ve not been precious about beta users sharing online. They’re doing it, unprompted (though we are encouraged and happy that they are).

Our goal is to be a warm hug for a wide spectrum of photographers. Aphera should be approachable to those getting their first proper camera, those who have dabbled and are returning to shooting RAW, and those like us who have been capturing for decades but are just weary of the behemoth apps and workflows.

Jen 🧶🏃🏼‍♀️🧗🏼‍♀️🏕️🧳 @jenschuetz

I am by no means an expert on color grading or photo manipulation, but I quite like how these images turned out by using @aphera. It's fun revisiting old photos that just sat on a hard drive.

January 2022, Table Top Wilderness, Arizona

#photography

Jen 🧶🏃🏼‍♀️🧗🏼‍♀️🏕️🧳 @jenschuetz

As a quitter of Lightroom due to its bulk and sluggishness, using @aphera is so refreshing. I use the minimal level of tools and spend a fraction of the time futzing to get wonderful results.

I may need to get a proper camera yet again.

Mojave Desert, California, January 2022

#photography

Jackson Hayes @jacksonhayes

Gotta say, this @aphera app is pretty great.

Colin Devroe @cdevroe

I'm digging the editing workflow in the @aphera beta. This was my first time using the app and I was able to find my way pretty quickly. Here are three quick example edits; two from Virgina and one from Oregon.

#photography

ru @rudantu

dark

editing w @aphera

ru @rudantu

Comparing 'just-imported' RAW interpretation - Aphera, Darktable, Lightroom (Adobe Color, Fujifilm Provia) head to head.

Aphera feels quite good with basic balancing alone. Darktable gets there, if you play with the AGX module a bit. Adobe Color always feels washed out and gray, esp in lower saturation areas. Fujifilm sims tend to feel too sweet/artificial, primaries too bright, reds too pink. @aphera @darktable@photog.social

Jason Santa Maria @jasonsantamaria

I’ve really been enjoying playing with @aphera while also using a borrowed Fujifilm X100V. My photos aren’t anything special, but it’s nice to knock some rust off.

Aphera is sitting in the sweet spot for me. Capable and customizable under the hood, while also really quick for mild processing (not my strong suit). It’s really damn refreshing!

Building

It continues! We’ve gotten some great feedback that’s really helped frame where an app like ours sits. We’ve got opinions on how things can be, and should be, but realize that many are entrenched by Lightroom and its behaviors. We hope to be a soft landing for LR users.

Looking at the compiled feedback from our beta users is thankfully in line with the decisions we are making, and helps push decisions we haven’t made yet. User feedback is clarifying in a way that can never be underestimated.

You also need good testers! We’re fortunate to have them.

What is Aphera?

2026-02-05T22:43:23Z

Well, hello. We’re making a Mac photo editing app.

Who’s making it?

Ryan Carver, Naz Hamid, and Juan Pablo Zambrano. We love making images. We all come from working in creative tooling. Naz wrote about his own backstory with digital photography — it explains a lot about why we’re building this.

What is Aphera?

Aphera is the app we’ve wanted forever. Existing tools use imaging techniques from before RAW editing existed. They’re bloated, UI-dense, slow, and have made working with photos a chore.

We built something different: a speedy, intentional photo editor that brings back the joy of working with images.

It’s fast.

Native Mac app. Loads instantly. Edits feel snappy. Bulk editing works. Apply a Look across your whole library if you want.

It’s inspired by how film works.

We created a from-scratch imaging pipeline informed by the history of film that brings its natural beauty to digital.

It meets you where you are.

Editing quickly for family? Going deep on a personal project? Sharing on social? The app works across that spectrum. We’re spending serious time on keyboard shortcuts so you can attain flow, but it’s absolutely usable with a mouse too.

No AI tricks.

We’re not here to add unicorns to your images. This is about editing photos, not generating them.

Beta

We’ve rebuilt the app over the last quarter. It’s stable enough that our early testers are relying on it for real work. There’s still plenty to do, but photos are getting out there.

Launching Spring 2026. If you’re curious about anything, want to see something specific, or just want to chat, our inbox is open.