The Best Thing to Happen to Photo Editing in a While: RNI Aero Review
RNI Aero is one of the best and most innovative things to happen to photography in a while.
There’s a particular look that is of value to many photographers. For years, they’ve been trying to find a simple way to emulate Kodak Aerochrome. This legendary film turns greens into pinks/oranges/red. And RNI finally accomplished it with RNI Aero. We talked to them about how they were doing it a while back. The application is available as Lightroom Presets, a Capture One integration, and on your phone. With this look, you’re getting a much different approach to the standard images you shoot, and embracing something very different. But we’ve been using it for a while.
Features
RNI Aero takes greens and transforms them into purples, reds, oranges, magentas, etc. If you’re thinking about the ROYGBIV scale, then it’s leaning more towards the I, V, R and O. Here are details from their website listing:
Aerochrome 02 (grainy & clean)
Aerochrome 03 (grainy & clean)
Aerochrome 04 (grainy & clean)
Aerochrome 05 (grainy & clean)
Aerochrome 06 (grainy & clean)
Aerochrome 07 (grainy & clean)
Aerochrome 08 (grainy & clean)
Aerochrome 09 (grainy & clean)
Aerochrome 10 (grainy & clean)
Aerochrome 11 (grainy & clean)
Aerochrome 12 (grainy & clean)
Aerochrome 13 (grainy & clean)
Aerochrome 14 (grainy & clean)
Aerochrome 15 (grainy & clean)
Aerochrome 16 (grainy & clean)
Aerochrome 17 (grainy & clean)
Aerochrome 18 (grainy & clean)
– Hard Fade
– Grain settings for various ISO values
– Slide Frames
– Smart Contrast
– Vignette
– Analog Softness
– Vintage Lens Effect
Ease of Use
If you’re any bit familiar with the RNI Films app, then you’ll feel right at home with Aero. RNI films is truly the single best photo editing app I’ve ever used. It even edits Raws. To start, you download the app to your phone. Then after giving it permission to access your photos, you choose an image. Said image appears in the interface. Like RNI Films, Aero has free presets and paid ones. There are various plans too. But if you don’t want the presets, there are still standard editing tools. Despite all of that, the main reason why you’d use Aero is for the presets.
Above is the original image before I edited it in Aero. This was shot with the Panasonic S5 and the 16-35mm f4. I beamed a JPEG image to my phone using WiFi. Then I loaded the photo into the app and went to work.
Here’s what that image would look like in the editing interface. I applied the Aero 2 preset. You can choose to edit in any order you wish. Apply the preset later if you want. When your done, you can export the image to your phone, to an app, etc. But you’ll always keep the original and the edited version. Oh, and you can always remove the little Aero watermark. If anything, that’s the biggest difference between RNI films and Aero. You have to ensure that the watermark isn’t exported, so the editing process is slower.
Image Quality
Here are sample images done with the app. We shot and edited some of these with the Apple iPhone 8 Plus. Some of the photos were imported from a camera and edited. But overall, you won’t be able to tell the difference. That’s the funnest part about it.
Conclusions
I find Aero to be incredibly fun. More importantly, I think that it opens up a ton of creative possibilities. A model can be in a field of green and you’d render it all to look red. The spinach in your salad can suddenly become pink. Forest can be magenta. It’s incredibly fun and there’s no reason why we wouldn’t recommend it. I’m going to have the most fun with it during Spring and Autumn. When the leaves are naturally changing, the landscapes are most fascinating. That means that they’re bound to make better images with this app.
If you’re on an Apple device, go download RNI Aero. And trust us, buy the other presets.