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

Skylum, the company behind the Luminar line of AI photo editors, is discontinuing Aperty, a dedicated AI portrait editor it launched in 2024. The shutdown comes as a surprise to many users, given that Skylum had publicly committed to five years of updates when the app debuted - a promise that now goes unfulfilled with the product being retired well short of that window.

Aperty was positioned as a focused tool for portrait retouching, leaning on AI to automate tasks like skin smoothing, feature adjustments, and lighting corrections. It was sold as a standalone product separate from Luminar Neo, targeting photographers and retouchers who wanted a purpose-built portrait workflow rather than a general-purpose editor. At launch, the five-year update pledge was presented as a signal of long-term commitment and a way to justify the purchase for buyers wary of software abandonware.

The decision to pull the plug so early is likely to frustrate customers who paid for the software based on that promise. It fits into a broader pattern in the software industry where AI-focused products, facing high development costs and shifting market conditions, are scaled back or discontinued faster than anticipated. For Skylum specifically, maintaining multiple separate AI applications while continuing to develop Luminar Neo may have proven difficult to sustain commercially.

For photographers evaluating AI editing tools, the Aperty situation serves as a practical reminder to weigh vendor commitments carefully - particularly when a product is new and its user base is still small. Whether Skylum will offer refunds, migrate affected users to Luminar Neo, or provide any other form of remediation for Aperty customers has not been clearly detailed in early reporting. Users currently relying on the app would be wise to check Skylum's official communications for guidance on next steps before the shutdown takes effect.