Splitting up Aspect and Aspect Pro · Aspect Preview 30

Where we are coming from

The plan in the background has so far been to let the mobile version fill in this spot. You would be able to always get it for free, but you wouldn't have access to the desktop version and would instead be locked to the mobile phone or tablet.

Now we've been pondering about this again during the last weeks and came to the conclusion that this would really go against our goals. While mobile devices are a great thing to have for many things, they inevitably lead to oversimplified user interfaces that are often not really able to capture the complexity associated with the tasks they are made to handle — professional photo organization certainly being one of those.

The answer to this is oftentimes artificial intelligence. And while we have many plans for employing AI in Aspect in a highly useful way. We are convinced that it should merely be used as a tool, even one that may be powerful. It should, however, not blindly replace everything, such as by simply substituting the organization system by a content-aware AI search.

This may be a decent solution for a consumer who wouldn't otherwise organize anything anyway, but as a (semi-)professional user, you simple loose far too much predictability, as well as overview over your work. And even for the consumer, it would be much preferable to assist with the creation of a true organization structure that gives back by providing a mental image of all the memories contained in vast amounts of images, possibly taken over decades.

Where we are going

In essence, we came to to the conclusion that we really want to offer a free desktop version, too, so that we actually have the chance to propagate a cloud-free future on open systems.

The result of this is that Aspect, starting with this release, is now free to use! At the same time, we are introducing Aspect Pro. Aspect Pro offers additional features that are mostly interesting for professional power users. New features will also be tailored towards a higher end user base, while the base version will continue to be a fully featured, professionally viable application.

Oh, and of course there are no ads or hidden data collection facilities of any sort in either of the two!

Try it out

Go to the download page to get the new free version of Aspect, or take the opportunity to get one of the last early-access licenses for Aspect Pro.