Raw

Editing RAW files with Aphera

PHOTO Contact Sheet 14 September 2026, 12:30 Bainbridge Island, WA

Guardian of the sad little Hydrangea that was promptly watered after this shot in the front yard.

Finding a way to explore photography and the world around me through a good camera and good photo software.

Originally written on Mastodon, a federated service, on September 11, 2026.

Luke Dorny @Luke@typo.social 28d · Sep 11 ’26

Finally went through some RAW shots to explore color correcting/designing(?)/developing.

I clearly lean towards warmer and darker.

1. Avila 2: Chronostasis 3:Solaris 4. Solaris

#photo #aphera #raw #leica

Power of the Presses event with large wooden type blocks for print making protest poster cards

Guardian of the sad little Hydrangea that was promptly watered after this shot in the front yard

A bit coolor setting under this tree of magical caps

The water pump lever that will soon get enameled orange after a good cleanup.

1 of 1 28d · Sep 11 ’26

And here’s a photo just outside the back door using the look Gambar in @aphera:
#photo #aphera #raw #leica

Endor-style tree branches using Gambar look with practically no alteration.

There are a few things that got me here.

After the latest walkthrough on youtube today by Aphera, I decided to revisit some of the RAW photographs I have been shooting to see how expressive and quickly I could alter them in a way that makes sense.

You can watch the 1 hour walkthrough with Ryan with the link above. I’m not reviewing the app here, just mentioning why the app is helping me create the workflow for my photos and this will support how quickly and effectively I’m able to share photos of here, just the way I’d like to share them.

I have a photography section of this site that I’m prepping for launch soon and I was trying to find a way to collect the EXIF data for each photo I upload, hopefully in a way that is consistent and doesn’t require me to type everything in every time.

I really just needed to find a reason to allow myself to explore the world around me through photography. These are the tools that help. Aphera is a new app created to do exactly what I’m wanting to do: get my photos edited and prepped to put on the site. Aphera has a really fast and configurable export tool to bring the EXIF data with the export, so importing here to the site is made easy, and the EXIF data can be parsed, etc. This is fantastic.

So this round I collected some photos from earlier this year and started going through them with Aphera.

The existing photos are exploration photos, not ones I’m particularly proud of, just interesting ones. The settings for the camera on the original photo were not setup properly and I’m still exploring f-stops, lenses, depth of field, lighting, backlighting, etc., as I’m just an amateur at this. And the manual Leica camera forces me to learn it, and that’s the point. To soak in the experience and earn the creative output.

Conclusion

But this exploration was fun. Soon these will all likely be reuploaded in the new photo section once it’s launched and I’ll just point you there from here when done.

Thanks for the speed, Aphera, and what is essentially a tool for exploring the emotion of my photos both quickly and creatively.

After a brief few minutes tinkering with settings, here are the quick results I’m happy with:

Endor-style tree branches using the Gambar look with practically no alteration.

It was great to interact with the Aphera team on a livestream, and I look forward to learning photography and the app more over time.

Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoy the photos.
— L

P.S. I’ve posted about the camera I’ve been using lately: lukedorny.com/posts/leica-tl2-two-years