VSCO, originally short for Visual Supply Company, was founded in 2011 by Joel Flory and Greg Lutze in California. The company began as a small collective of photographers and designers focused on creating tools that helped digital images feel closer to the look and discipline of analogue photography.
Its earliest products were desktop presets and plugins for Adobe Lightroom and Apple Aperture. These plugins were notable for their film-inspired colour science, subtle contrast curves, and restrained saturation, drawing on careful analysis of classic film stocks rather than heavy-handed effects. We used the Aperture plugins until Apple discontinued Aperture in 2014.
VSCO launched VSCO Cam for iOS in 2012 with ten presets, numbered 01 to 10, which remain available today. In 2016 the app was rebranded to simply VSCO, marking the beginning of the platform in its current form.
It was in 2016 that we started posting to VSCO, with photography shot on Fujifilm cameras, transferred to the iPhone and edited in VSCO using the A / Analog presets. A6 in particular became a long-term favourite. For black and white imagery the X / BW Fade presets, with their dark tonality, strong contrast and shadow fade, became another regular choice, with B / BW Classic used for a cleaner, more iconic monochrome look.
In 2017 VSCO launched ‘VSCO X’, a paid subscription account, moving from one-off in-app purchases of presets to a recurring membership model with access to an expanding library of presets, advanced tools and creative features. This marked the company’s formal pivot towards monetising the app through paid accounts and recurring revenue rather than standalone purchases.
In June 2021 VSCO hired Eric Wittman as President, bringing in an external executive to oversee operations, product, design and growth. In 2023 Wittman was appointed CEO of VSCO, succeeding co-founder Joel Flory, marking the most significant management change and signalling a shift as the company aimed to adapt to the creator economy.
In 2023 VSCO launched Studio, a desktop and web extension of VSCO’s editing tools that looked like a potential replacement for the long-lost Aperture. Two years later, Studio still does not have feature parity with the mobile app, let alone any meaningful file management.
Since then VSCO has launched Workspace, CRM and business-workflow software for photographers, Capture, a standalone camera app with real-time presets and manual controls, Canvas, a visual mood-board and portfolio tool, and AI Lab.
Over the years we have continued to post work on the platform, without any of the success of the early years, and without access to the Journal feature after it was deprecated for five years, only to be relaunched as a simpler blog under the VSCO Pro account.
Ten years on, VSCO feels less like a platform and more like a collection of tools, some ambitious, some unfinished. The sense of discovery that once defined the platform has faded, and engagement is no longer guaranteed simply by showing up with thoughtful work. Yet the core of what made VSCO matter remains intact. Its presets continue to reward, its editing tools still encourage a deliberate approach, and for photographers who value tone over trend, it remains a familiar part of the workflow. The golden days may have passed, but the visual language VSCO helped shape continues to endure.
