Skylum has officially announced its newest desktop software Aperty, formerly known as Project “Barcelona”, designed for professional portrait editors who value time and quality.
According to the company, the new application will set a new standard for the next generation of portrait retouching tools for creatives by combining advanced AI technologies with state-of-the-art features. “Aperty delivers unmatched precision and natural-looking results, making it the ideal choice for professional photographers who value time and quality.”
The company says some improved AI technology powering Aperty include new Face Mesh, Face and Body Segmentation, and “cutting-edge” Synthetic Data Set Generation models. ‘Face Mesh’ will be able to process up to 4,000 dots per face — over 20 times more when compared to other applications on the market, per Skylum. This feature promises to ensure every edit is precise and accurately represents the whole image’s depth and dimensions.
‘Face and Body Segmentation’ can detect up to 30 classes of face and body parts, which will allow for high-detailed retouching and reshaping adjustments, and the ‘Synthetic Data Set Generation’ found in the application’s AI models have been trained using “synthetic data” to ensure that each creators’ original work remains secure and untouched, which the company says will address some of the common concerns among photographers around privacy and intellectual property.
The application is designed in collaboration with portrait photographer Julia Trotti in an effort to build an application that specifically meets the needs of semi-pro and professional photographers by offering advanced editing features and a streamlined workflow that even includes batch processing.
“Aperty is the portrait editing software I’ve always dreamt of creating to help save time retouching while maintaining professional results,” says Julia.
Aperty will feature several additional tools at launch, including skin smoothing and blemish removals to enhance the look of skin while keeping it natural and preserving permanent details, face/body skin color correction to match and balance skin color, removing any red or green tones cause by mixed lighting or shadows, studio light to create artificial light sources and apply textures to enhance their scenes, a makeup tool to add blush, contour, and highlights in post-production, enhanced masking to create precision mask layers for people, objects, and backgrounds for greater control over edits within an image, as well as the ability to apply Presets and LUTs in just a few clicks.
“We paid close attention to the challenges faced by professional photographers to deliver exactly what they need. With Aperty, what used to take hours — retouching each photo individually — can now be done in a fraction of the time,” says Skylum CEO Ivan Kutanin. “We understand that a photographer’s time is precious, especially for professionals who run their own businesses, which is why we believe retouching should be fast, straightforward and deliver high-quality results every time.”
Pricing and Availability
The new Aperty software will be available to preorder starting October 1st, 2024, with a release date set for November 7th, 2024. The application is available at an early-bird price: a one-year subscription plus a one-year free for $199/€179. After the launch on November 7th, Aperty will be available at $29.90 for a one-month subscription or $299 for an annual subscription. All plans include the latest version, 24/7 technical support, and activation on up to two devices. Interested users will also have the option to preorder a lifetime license for $249, which includes two years of free upgrades and five years of updates.
Image credits: Skylum