Why we built Cleanr differently: a founder's look at photo editing in 2025

The fragmentation problem nobody talks about

Most photo editors fall into one of two camps. Either they're general-purpose toolkits that overwhelm casual users with menus and sliders, or they're single-trick apps that do one thing well and force you to context-switch constantly.

When we started MRVL, I looked at what creators actually did with their photos. Not what we thought they should do. I interviewed small business owners listing products on Etsy, Christian influencers managing Instagram accounts, parents cleaning up family snapshots. The pattern was obvious. They weren't using one app. They were using four or five, sometimes more.

Sky needs replacing? That's App A. Object in the corner? App B. Face needs smoothing? App C. And if you wanted to batch process ten photos for consistency, you were stitching together screenshots and notes.

This wasn't a design problem. It was a workflow problem.

The watermark and credit trap

I'll be direct: some popular editors train users into dependency through friction. Free tier slaps a watermark on every export. Then they watch you upgrade. Or they use credit systems that obscure real pricing. You think you're getting a feature, but you're actually burning through currency you don't fully understand.

We rejected that model entirely. Cleanr's free tier gives you 3 object removals daily, 3 background removals, unlimited frames, faith mode access, and zero watermarks. You're not crippled. You're not tricked into premium through dark patterns.

The Plus tier at £3.99 monthly or £29.99 yearly unlocks unlimited everything. The Pro tier adds commercial licensing and better batch processing (50 photos instead of 10). The Pro tier at £12.99 monthly or £99.99 yearly is where the advanced tools live: selective adjustments with brushes, face retouch, generative fill, curves.

That's it. No mysterious coins. No hidden limits. No feeling of being played.

22 tools instead of one trick

The honest answer to 'Cleanr vs Remini' starts with scope. Remini does upscaling and restoration. It's good at those things. Cleanr handles that, but we also built object removal using PatchMatch content-awareness, sky replacement with six curated presets (Blue Day, Golden Hour, Sunset, Dusk, Overcast, Stormy), background removal with fifteen variations, portrait blur with subject masking, batch processing, EXIF stripping for privacy, old photo colourisation, smart crop, text overlays, watermark grids, night denoise, and more.

Why? Because users told us they were switching apps for these. A church media coordinator cleaning up a ten-year-old baptism photo needs restoration. But she also needs to swap the sky from grey to golden hour for her social media carousel. And she needs to batch process twelve similar shots for consistency. One app, one workflow.

The Pro tier adds HSL colour adjustments, tone curves with proper spline interpolation, selective adjustments via brush mask, face retouch, and generative fill. These aren't gimmicks. They're the tools professionals actually use, priced fairly.

Who this is actually built for

We built Cleanr for three groups, in order of how we think about them.

First: faith creators. Christian influencers, church media teams, worship bands managing Instagram and TikTok accounts. They want professional results without wrestling a complex interface or bumping into paywalls every third edit. Faith Mode includes warm, gospel-friendly presets and scripture overlay options. This isn't tokenism. It came from listening to real users in that space.

Second: frustrated everyday users. People who've been burned by watermarks, confusing credit systems, or apps that feel designed to extract money rather than serve users. They want to clean up a photo in under a minute.

Third: small business owners. Shopify sellers, Etsy creators, local service providers. They need clean product shots without learning Photoshop or hiring a designer. Batch processing matters to them. So does the commercial license in Pro.

If you're a photo professional who needs advanced retouching, Lightroom exists. We're not competing for that user. We're competing for the person who has a real photo problem and wants it solved in an app, today, without a subscription trap.

The technical choices that reflect this philosophy

Cleanr runs on your device, not a server. Your photos don't leave your phone. That's not marketing. That's engineering.

We use Vision frameworks for face detection in blemish removal and portrait blur. PatchMatch for content-aware object removal (the same algorithm Photoshop uses). CIColorCube LUTs for naturalistic colourisation. CIMedianFilter for JPEG artefact removal. These aren't trendy choices. They're the proven, reliable options that work.

Batch processing handles 10 photos in Plus, 50 in Pro. Night denoise uses proper noise reduction, not just darkening everything. Text overlays support position, size, colour, and opacity. Smart crop respects six common aspect ratios so you're not guessing.

Every choice reflects the same principle: solve real problems with real tools, price them fairly, don't trick users.

What changed when we launched

Week one, we got messages from people we didn't expect. Not just creators. Parents cleaning up a damaged photo from their phone. Someone who'd given up on recovering a sunset shot from 2015. A small business owner who'd been paying for three subscriptions.

The most common feedback: 'I didn't expect this to be simple.' That might sound like a small thing, but it's not. Most software has moved toward complexity as a proxy for value. We moved the opposite direction. Can the same feature be powerful and intuitive? We think so.

One user told me she'd used Remini before and was happy with it, but needed the other tools too. So she switched to Cleanr because it meant one subscription instead of two. That's the problem we're actually solving. Not 'we're better at upscaling.' But 'we're the place you don't have to leave.'