Well, hello. We're making Aphera (fka PhotoEditor), an upcoming Mac photo editing app. You're receiving this because you're curious what we're up to, or want to get your hands on it.

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.

If you're interested in testing — and great at detailed feedback — hit reply. Tell us about your current workflow and how you think Aphera might fit. We're adding a small group of testers this round and want people who'll actually use it.

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

We're glad you're here.