Own Your Tools

When I started using Adobe Photoshop 4.0, the software cost $649 — itself a price reduction from the 1.0 price of $895 in 1990. Professional software for professionals.

Adobe formalized a different logic in 2013 with Creative Cloud: instead of selling you software, they’d rent it to you by the month. Cheaper up front, sure. But over the long term, a much bigger squeeze. Two years of monthly Photoshop alone runs close to that original $895 price — and almost no one pays for just one Adobe app. You pay for the whole Creative Cloud, with a stack of apps and features you’ll never touch. And if you stop paying, modifying old files becomes impossible.

Meanwhile, a different kind of software company kept making excellent, focused tools for the Mac. They’re independent, bootstrapped, and stubbornly committed to selling you something you own. These are the companies we’ve long admired. They’re the ones holding the line while the rest of the industry added one subscription after another. Software, streaming, media. Now cars. Now fridges?!

This is the company we aim to be. We’re three people making software with care, consideration, and intention. We have no investors. We built Aphera to be the kind of product and company we want to see in the world.

We believe there’s a modern way to work with the images and moments that matter to you most. Aphera is our answer to that: durable, speedy, intentional, and built for editing flow.

What Aphera Costs, and Why

Aphera will be $199. At launch we’re offering it at $99 for a limited time.

That’s a one-time purchase. You get the full application plus a year of updates — new features, new camera support, and actual human support (that’s us).

After year one, continual updates are optional at $99/year. You decide whether new features, cameras, and macOS support are worth it. If you stop, Aphera doesn’t — it keeps running exactly as it did with your last update. You can resume updates later, no penalties.

The big apps like Lightroom and Capture One have complex pricing that runs from $360 to $600+ over three years. When the subscription ends, so does your editing.¹ Our model is different: Aphera is $199, once, and updates are optional. So three years runs $199 to $397 depending on what you choose. Whatever you’ve paid for keeps on running.

Photography is never just forward. Sometimes you’re active, sometimes you need a break. Sometimes you look back at old images and reimagine them anew — a different stylistic preference or a different intention. To be able to pick up the tool you made those with, far in the future, and and know it’s still there. That’s what owning your tools means.

The same way you’ve invested in your camera bodies, lenses, and supporting tools, we aim for Aphera to be another tool in your kit — one that helps you make images that inspire.