Aftershoot pricing in 2026: every plan, plainly
Aftershoot sells three tools and every combination of them, which is seven prices before you have picked a billing cycle. Here is the whole ladder with the annual totals filled in, the one combination that makes no sense at any volume, and the arithmetic on when a flat rate genuinely beats paying by the photo.
The whole price list in one table
Aftershoot is three separate products. Select does AI culling, Edit applies your editing style, Retouch does portrait retouching. You can buy any one, any pair, or all three, and the bundle discounts change the answer. These figures are from Aftershoot's own published pricing, last updated in May 2026.
| Plan | Annual billing | Monthly billing | Cost for a year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Select (culling) | $10 per month | $15 per month | $120 |
| Retouch | $20 per month | $25 per month | $240 |
| Edit | $30 per month | $35 per month | $360 |
| Select + Retouch | $30 per month | $40 per month | $360 |
| Select + Edit | $40 per month | $50 per month | $480 |
| Complete (all three) | $45 per month | $55 per month | $540 |
| Edit + Retouch | $50 per month | $60 per month | $600 |
Prices checked August 2026 from each vendor's own pricing page.
Every plan on that list processes unlimited images, and the trial is 30 days with no card required. Aftershoot's own product page states that it works locally on your computer rather than depending on cloud uploads, which is why nothing in the price list is measured in gigabytes.
Notice the row at the bottom. Edit and Retouch together is $50 a month, and Complete, which is those two plus culling, is $45. Buying that pair costs you $60 a year more than buying everything. If you find yourself in that column, add Select and take the discount. It is the one combination on the list that nobody should buy.
What unlimited is actually doing for you
The most important word in that table is not a number. Every tier processes unlimited images, which means your bill does not move when your calendar does.
Put a season through it. A wedding day is typically 2,000 to 4,000 RAW frames. Twenty five weddings is comfortably 75,000 frames before you count engagement sessions and the family shoot you took as a favor. On Select at $120 a year, that entire number costs nothing extra. A September with five weddings costs the same as a February with none.
That predictability is worth more to most working photographers than a lower headline price, because it makes the tool a fixed cost you can put in a spreadsheet once and stop thinking about. If you want the number that actually matters to your business, divide it per job rather than per month: $120 across 25 weddings is $4.80 a wedding. We work that method through the whole software stack in what your culling stack costs per wedding.
The flip side is honest too. Flat rate means low volume subsidizes high volume. Shoot eight jobs a year and that same $120 is $15 a job, and you are paying for capacity you never touch. Volume is the whole question with this pricing model, which is why the next section is arithmetic rather than opinion.
When a flat rate beats paying by the photo
The main alternative shape in this market is Imagen, which charges for editing by the image. Imagen's own pricing FAQ gives pay as you go at $0.05 per photo with a $7 monthly minimum, and adds $0.01 per photo for each extra AI tool such as crop or masking. Imagen also says its annual plans come with a discounted per photo rate, without publishing one figure for it, so treat the checkout screen as the source of truth.
Against Aftershoot Edit at $360 for the year, the crossover is arithmetic you can do on a napkin.
| Images edited in a year | Per photo at $0.05 | Aftershoot Edit, flat |
|---|---|---|
| 2,000 | $100 | $360 |
| 7,200 | $360 | $360 |
| 20,000 | $1,000 | $360 |
Prices checked August 2026 from each vendor's own pricing page.
Seven thousand two hundred edited images is the line. A wedding delivers roughly 400 to 800 finished photos, so the crossover lands somewhere between nine and eighteen weddings a year depending on how generous your galleries are. Below that, per photo is cheaper and you should not pay a flat rate out of a feeling that subscriptions are tidier. Above it, the flat rate wins and keeps winning, and it wins by more every year your business grows.
Culling is a different story, because the per photo model has mostly left that side of the market. Imagen's culling is $12 a month billed annually, or $18 monthly, for unlimited use, and it sits on top of an editing plan rather than standing alone, so the honest comparison against Select's $10 includes that $7 monthly floor underneath it. It is also cloud based, so your files upload before anything happens, which is a workflow difference rather than a pricing one. The general version of this break even, across every tool that charges either way, is in flat rate versus per image pricing.
Monthly or annual, and the eight month rule
The annual discount here is larger than most. Select is $10 a month on annual billing against $15 month to month, which is a third off. Over a year that is $120 against $180.
So the break even is eight months. Pay month to month and use it for eight months of the year and you have spent exactly what the annual plan costs. Nine months and you have overpaid. On the bigger plans the gap narrows in percentage terms but grows in dollars: Complete is $540 a year against $660 month to month, a difference of $120.
There is a third option that most seasonal photographers miss. Aftershoot's published terms let you pause a subscription for up to three months a year with your data retained. That covers a genuine off season without giving up the annual rate, which is a better deal than the month to month escape hatch for anyone whose quiet spell is a winter rather than a whole half year. Confirm the current terms at checkout before you plan around it.
Cancelling is where the real cost sits, and it is not on the price list. Aftershoot says you can cancel Select at any time with no penalty, but cancelling Edit or Retouch takes your custom AI profiles with it unless you pay $4 a month to keep them stored. Those profiles are the thing you spent weeks training on your own edits. That is the switching cost on the editing side, and it is worth knowing about on the day you subscribe rather than the day you leave.
Which line on the table to actually buy
Start from what you do yourself and work up, rather than starting from Complete and looking for reasons.
Select alone, $120 a year
You edit your own work and like editing your own work. The bottleneck is the three thousand frames sitting between the shoot and the editing. This is the right purchase for most wedding and event photographers, and it is the cheapest tier in the category, tied with Narrative's entry plan. Our Aftershoot Select review covers what the tool does well and the three limits that actually bite.
Complete, $540 a year
Only if you genuinely want AI editing and retouching, and only after the trial has convinced you the output is deliverable without a rescue pass. The bundle is good value against buying two tools, but good value on something you will not use is still a bill. Do the honest test: would you send that gallery under your own name.
Neither
Lightroom now ships Assisted Culling, which scores subject focus, eye focus and eyes open, and Adobe labels it early access and optimized for portraits and headshots. If you already pay Adobe and shoot portraits, run that before adding a line to your software bill. The cost calculator will tell you what the whole stack is costing you, and the alternatives roundup covers the rest of the field including the free options.
One more comparison worth holding in your head. A year of Aftershoot Select costs $120, which is less than a year of Photo Mechanic at $149 and well under its $299 perpetual license. Two very different tools, and the AI one is now the cheaper habit, which is a recent reversal. The license side of that is in Photo Mechanic perpetual versus subscription.
What the price does not cover
Three things no tier includes, and all three cost you something real.
The review pass. Aftershoot proposes and you approve. That is much faster than making every call yourself, but it is not zero, and any honest comparison of two tools should measure the time to a finished, human approved selection rather than the analysis timer in the interface. Budget the review or you will be disappointed by the arithmetic.
Ingest and metadata. No AI selection tool copies a card to two destinations, renames from a metadata pattern, or writes your caption and copyright on the way in. If you file to an editor, that is a separate purchase and the price list above does not replace it.
The evening. This is the one that never appears on any pricing page. The software runs on your computer, which means it starts when you get home, put the bag down, and sit at the desk. Every desktop tool in this category shares that, and the cloud ones ask you to upload first, which is the same wait wearing a different coat.
Where the work happens, not what it costs
A price comparison assumes the products are the same shape and differ only in the number. Across this whole category, they are the same shape: good desktop software that waits for you to get to a desk.
That is the part we are building Kepla around. The first pass happens on your iPhone or iPad, on the couch or the ride home, and the same shoot opens on your Mac when you need two nearly identical frames side by side at full size. Kepla clears the obvious misses and hands you the clean frames. It never deletes, moves or renames a single file, so every frame it did not pick is still there, one tap away.
We will say the awkward part plainly, because a pricing article is exactly the wrong place to be vague about it: the picking app is still being built, and Aftershoot will cull a folder for you this afternoon. If you need help this season, buy Select and get on with your year. The part of Kepla that works today is the booking page, which holds a date and takes a deposit, and it is free while we build.
FAQ
How much does Aftershoot cost in 2026?
On annual billing, Select is $10 a month, Retouch $20, Edit $30, and Complete, which is all three, is $45. Month to month those are $15, $25, $35 and $55. That works out to $120 a year for culling alone and $540 for everything. Every plan processes unlimited images and the trial is 30 days with no card. Prices checked August 2026.
Is Aftershoot Select on its own enough?
For most wedding and event photographers, yes. Select is the culling tool, and culling is the bottleneck that made you look at the price list in the first place. Edit and Retouch are AI editing and portrait retouching, which are worth buying only if you actually want to hand over your editing style. Start with Select at $120 a year and add the rest if the trial convinces you.
Is a flat rate cheaper than paying per photo?
It depends on volume. Aftershoot Edit is $360 a year for unlimited images. Imagen's pay as you go rate is $0.05 per photo with a $7 monthly minimum, so the two meet at about 7,200 edited images a year. At roughly 400 to 800 delivered photos per wedding, that is somewhere between nine and eighteen weddings. Below the line, per photo wins.
Does Aftershoot limit how many photos I can process?
No. Unlimited image processing applies to every plan, including the cheapest one. That is the main practical argument for this pricing model: a season of 75,000 RAW frames costs exactly the same as a quiet year, so your busiest month never produces a surprise invoice. Processing happens locally on your own computer rather than in the cloud.
Can I pause my Aftershoot subscription in the off season?
Aftershoot's published terms allow a pause of up to three months a year with your data retained. For a photographer with a genuine winter lull, that is usually a better deal than month to month billing, because you keep the annual rate, which is a third cheaper on Select. Check the current terms at checkout before you build a plan around it.
What happens to my custom AI profiles if I cancel?
Aftershoot states that cancelling Select carries no penalty, but cancelling Edit or Retouch clears the custom profiles you trained unless you pay $4 a month to keep them stored. Those profiles represent real hours of your work, so treat that storage fee as part of the exit cost when you compare the editing tiers against anything else.
Pay for the culling. Keep the evening.
Kepla for Mac clears the obvious misses from a card, names the reason on every frame it sets aside, and leaves the choosing to you. Nothing is ever deleted, moved or renamed. Free through the private preview · the first hundred photographers keep it at $99 a year.