Aperty Review – Capable, Fun, and Slow

Aperty is a highly capable, straightforward, and fun portrait editing application that can improve poor-quality portraits regardless of the user’s skill set.

However, the qualities of this early iteration of Aperty are somewhat undermined by slow performance and high latency, resulting in a clunky workflow. Nonetheless, even in its newborn state, Aperty has much to offer and is well worth a try. Jump to Conclusion

What is Aperty

Aperty is a photo editing application for Windows PC and Mac OS designed specifically for editing portraits. Thus, Aperty comes stocked with portrait-centric features such as skin tone, eye enhancement, teeth whitening, and even the means to add a little makeup.

But critically, like its Skylum Software stablemate, Luminar Neo, Aperty is designed to make portrait editing as easy as possible. With Aperty, you only need to drag a few sliders to produce transformative results.

If you are wondering, Aperty is not limited to processing portraits. On the contrary, Aperty is stocked with all the usual adjustments such as exposure, tone curves, white balance, and sharpening. However, Aperty’s value lies in its unique portrait-editing features. Thus, if you’re looking for an Aperty-like application for general photography, you should try Luminar Neo instead. Read Luminar Neo Review

How Much Does Aperty Cost

An Aperty lifetime license will cost you a one-time payment of US$155. For comparison, Luminar Neo costs US$189 outright or $8 per month. Buy Aperty Now

Aperty Free Trial

Subscribe to my newsletter to be notified when a free Aperty trial becomes available. Subscribe Now.

What does Aperty do?

• Presets
• Photo Editing
• Masking
• Skin Toning
• Makeup
• Reshape
• Studio Light
• Portrait Bokeh AI

Presets

Aperty includes 20 different Presets ranging from subtle enhancements and black-and-white conversions to stylized imagery and film simulations. You can add Presets to your favorites list and create presets based on your own edits.

Photo Editing

Aperty features a full suite of raw developing tools, such as Exposure, Tone Curves, White Balance, Color Mixer, Sharpen, Detail, and more. You can also use Aperty to crop and straighten images and correct optical distortions and aberrations. The Creative Effects tab allows you to access various LUTS and Film Grain, High Key, and Vignette effects. Also included is a somewhat unreliable Erase tool and Dodge and Burn.

Masking

Aperty features automated masking, enabling you to limit your adjustments to your photo’s person, sky, or background. Thus, you can apply one set of adjustments to boost your subject’s presence and a separate series of adjustments to diminish their background.

As usual, mask accuracy depends on the complexity of your image. However, you can refine the mask manually using the brush tool. Alternatively, you can use the Luminosity Mask to select areas of your photo based on their brightness or keep it simple with the radial and linear graduated filters.

Skin Toning

The retouch tab features adjustments for smoothing skin, removing blemishes, brightening eyes, shaping mouths, and applying makeup. While many tools may overwhelm you, they’re well-named and absurdly easy to use.

Thus, your challenge will be discovering which adjustments work well together and avoiding excessive settings and vulgar results. While Aperty features some transformative tools that some might consider dehumanizing, it has true value in correcting practicalities such as unflattering light and lens distortion. In other words, you can use Aperty to make your subjects look more like themselves.

Makeup

With Aperty, you can top up your subject’s Blush, Contour, Highlights, Eyeliner, and Lip Gloss (red only). Furthermore, having tested these features on photos of myself, I can confirm they are realistic enough to haunt this male reviewer’s dreams. Like many of Aperty’s features, they are effective, flexible, and easy to apply.

Reshape

Aperty’s Reshape tab includes tools for slimming faces, shaping and repositioning eyes and brows, sculpting the nose, shifting the mouth, and slimming the body. These tools can be used for vanity or to correct the cruel effects of wide-angle lens distortion.

Studio Light

With Studio Light, you can place digital light sources within your image to simulate a real-life multi-light setup. For instance, you might place a light overhead, towards the side of your subject’s side, or both. You can also add color to your light and even textures. While there’s no substitute for real-world lighting, Studio Light might be the next best thing.

Portrait Bokeh AI

Aperty has inherited Luminar Neo’s background blurring tool, Portrait Bokeh AI. As the name suggests, Portrait Bokeh AI blurs your subject’s background, thus simulating the effect of a large-aperture lens.

Blurring the background allows you to hide scenic clutter and create contrast between your in-focus subject and the blurred background. Unlike a large-aperture lens, Portrait Bokeh AI works on photos you’ve already taken and costs much less.

What is Aperty Like to use

Aperty is fun and exceptionally straightforward to use. Thus, you’ll be capable of producing transformative results within hours of use. Yet, while Aperty couldn’t be simpler to use, it could be faster.

When it comes to simple edits, such as boosting exposure or tuning white balance, Aperty can keep up with adjustments in real-time. However, as you apply more advanced features, Aperty begins to slow, and your edit will become increasingly burdened by the weight of the effects applied.

This can result in delays as you transition from one feature to another. However, the bigger problem is the latency between adjustments, as Aperty will no longer be able to react to your inputs in real-time. Thus, each time you shift a slider, you must wait 1-10 seconds for the preview to refresh to find out if you need to adjust the slider again. This stalls progress and results in a bumpy workflow, which, while acceptable for processing a small number of images, makes Aperty unpractical for editing large batches.

I want to note that I am testing a very early edition of Aperty. Also, as with all PCs, my exact build is unique, and it’s very possible that Aperty will run better with your files on your hardware. Thus, it’s well worth testing Aperty for yourself. Try Aperty now—for free.

Who is Aperty for

Casual photographers have the most to gain from Aperty. Unlike professional portrait photographers, casual photographers are unlikely to be as experienced or as well equipped and, thus, less likely to get the best result in camera.

Yet, this is not to say Aperty cannot benefit professionals. On the contrary, Aperty is extremely useful when overcoming poor light, an uncooperative subject, and even a case of acne. While I’d not recommend Aperty for processing a wedding’s worth of images due to its speed, it could prove indispensable for rescuing critical photos.

Best Alternatives to Aperty

1. Luminar Neo
2. ACDSee Ultimate

Aperty vs Luminar Neo

Aperty borrows much of its feature set from Luminar Neo. For instance, Neo offers Skin AI, Blemish removal, Face AI, Studio Light, and Portrait Bokeh AI. Since Luminar Neo is designed for general photography, it is also packed with tools such as Sky Replacement, Relight AI, Generative AI, and plenty more.

But when it comes to processing portraits, Aperty does everything Luminar Neo does and much more. Additions include expansions to Neo’s tools and new features, such as adding makeup. Still, it’s a hard choice, but Luminar Neo would better serve the general photographer. Read Luminar Neo Review.

Aperty vs ACDSee Ultimate

Although many photo editing applications now have a portrait mode, ACDSee Ultimate’s Face Edit AI is my favorite. While it’s not as capable as Aperty, it is more responsive and has some tricks Aperty does not. For instance, you can convert a frown into a smile, redirect your subject’s gaze, and smooth away crow’s feet. All features that would suit Aperty.

However, the main difference between Aperty and ACDSee Ultimate is that Ultimate is a full-featured photo studio with Face Recognition-powered photo management, a Lightroom-esque raw editor, and a separate layer-based editor. Thus, if you are a general photographer who happens to shoot a few portraits, ACDSee Ultimate has more to offer. If your focus is portraits, Aperty is the way to go.

Conclusion – is Aperty any good?

Aperty is exceptionally straightforward to use and highly capable. In a market packed with broadly similar photo editing applications, it’s nice to test one designed to meet the needs of a specific photography genre.

Furthermore, Aperty meets those needs with style. The tools are practical and fun, and the results are excellent. However, Aperty’s virtues are somewhat undermined by its speed. I don’t mind waiting a moment while an application transitions from one labor-saving super tool to another, as the results are worth it. Yet, the latency I endured while waiting to see the effect of each of my adjustments was jarring and frustrating.

For this reason, Aperty’s performance risks alienating a part of its audience. Professional portrait photographers may capture hundreds of images in a single shoot, and Aperty is not light-footed enough to handle such volumes.

Yet, regardless of its speed, professional photographers may have the least to gain from Aperty’s outstanding capabilities. After all, Aperty’s Studio Light is a little redundant when you own and shoot with actual studio lights. Thus, those who will benefit most from Aperty are the casual photographers getting by with whatever camera, lens, and skillset they carry while tolerating whatever light the world provides. Under these conditions, Aperty’s capabilities can offer even the most flawed portrait a transformative upgrade.

I like Aperty and think its intended audience will, particularly once its performance has improved. But even in its current state, Aperty is highly effective, lots of fun, and well worth a try. Try Aperty Now—Free.

About the Author

Richard Adams

A former IT specialist and photography fanatic, I began Silent Peak as way to combine two of my greatest obsessions. When I’m not writing, testing, and comparing photography software and gear, I’m roaming the mean streets and frost-bitten surf of coastal New Zealand.