Skylum ‘Saying Goodbye’ to the AI Portrait Editor Aperty Despite Promising 5 Years of Updates

Skylum is killing its AI Portrait Editor Aperty this week despite promising five years of updates when it launched the app in 2024.

In an email, Skylum says that it is saying “goodbye to Aperty” and is officially closing the application on November 4.

“We know how valuable Aperty has been to you and thousands of other photographers. This was not an easy decision to make. But sometimes you have to let go of something good to build something genuinely special,” the company writes.

“As a company putting photographers first, we want to build products that bring joy to photography and editing, not just do the job well. We are closing Aperty to focus on Luminar, our flagship product, enhancing it with new features and technologies that will help photographers release their creative vision to the world. Luminar already integrates Aperty’s portrait-editing capabilities, and we are committed to improving it even further, so it eventually becomes an ultimate editing tool for photographers of every kind.”

Skylum says those who already own Aperty can continue to use it, but it does not sound like it will ever receive another update. That’s likely to be distressing for photographers who purchased Aperty expecting Skylum to make good on its promise to continue adding updates to the app for three years. Skylum also promised users that it would release a roadmap for upcoming updates in 2025. That never happened, and now it definitely won’t.

On September 20, Aperty users noticed that Skylum already appeared to be pulling support for the app.

“Unfortunately, Aperty is currently not available for purchase. We expect to share more official information and updates regarding the product in the coming weeks. I apologize for any disappointment this may cause,” a Skylum representative said.

The standalone Aperty Instagram account also disappeared. It is likely that Skylum will be bringing the Aperty features into Luminar, but the company did not confirm this. It also did not address the fact that it promised Aperty buyers three more years of updates that it will clearly not be delivering.

Lifetime licenses to Aperty were sold for $250 along with the promise of five years of updates. Skylum didn’t even meet half of that promise. The last update to the app came in March, following one in January. Before that, it had been seven months since the previous update. No more are coming.

Suddenly closing software is, unfortunately, somewhat par for the course for Skylum, formerly MacPhun. Back in 2021, when it launched Luminar Neo, Skylum faced considerable backlash for its choice to sunset Luminar and Luminar AI and push those existing customers to purchase the new standalone application instead of simply updating existing ones. Skylum did the same thing when it moved from Aurora HDR to Luminar 4.

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Image creditsSkylum