Since launch, one of the most frequent requests we’ve gotten is for a Histogram. This week we’ve added one, along with Waveform and Color scopes.

The Histogram is a trusted tool for many photographers, and we didn’t want its absence to hinder anyone starting with Aphera. It’s a great way to be objective about an image, though we often see it overused in search of a “correct” exposure.

Waveform is less familiar to most photographers — it’s more common in video work — and plots brightness across the width of the image, so you can understand exposure and clipping spatially: where in the image those tones lie.

The Color scope plots hue and saturation with brightness removed. It helps you spot color casts and understand the range of colors in an image, independent of tone.

Scopes are a wonderful complement to our favorite way of judging an image: with our eyes. We love using surround color as a way to understand where an image sits. Traditionally, photographs were seen on paper, against white walls in galleries, or framed with a choice of mat color. Digitally, the context multiplies: a photo looks different on a website than it does on social media, different again on Instagram vs. Threads, and different across your own devices depending on screen quality, brightness, and settings like Dark Mode or Night Shift.

Surround color lets you move between black, dark gray, mid gray, and white so you can judge how the image reads across environments. We feel it gives you permission and a sense of play to let go of the data and think about what feels right. Whichever method you prefer, we hope these tools help in getting to great images quickly. Learn more about Scopes in the Docs.

30-Day Trials

All existing trials have been extended from 14 to 30 days. We hope you live with the app a little longer and can take your time with it. (Want to trial again? Just ask.)

Changelog and Public Roadmap

We’ve been busy. After a flurry of updates post-launch, we’ve settled into a two-week release schedule and describe each update in our Changelog (the three updates since the last newsletter add RAW+JPG, more export options, anamorphic desqueeze, performance settings, and much more).

Curious what’s coming next for Aphera? Check the new Public Roadmap! After launching 1.0, we wanted to see what would rise to the top of the list among things we were already working on. We’ve got a good sense of that now, so we feel confident in laying out some of the larger updates we have planned.

If you have any thoughts, we’d love to hear them.

Thanks,
Juan, Naz, Ryan.