Social publishing scheduler built for edited photos

A photographer or content creator finishes editing in Lightroom or Photoshop, then has to export, open a separate scheduling app, re-upload the image, write captions, tag products, and set posting times — and if the image needs a tweak after that, they repeat the whole sequence. Users are specifically calling out that 'the integration with social media, especially Instagram, could be better for scheduling posts and receiving insights' and that 'the application has limited functionality to connect with social sites like Facebook and Instagram.' This is not a small inconvenience; for creators and social media managers whose entire job output is images, this context switch happens multiple times per day.

Adobe has no incentive to build deep Instagram or Facebook publishing because Meta's API terms are restrictive and the integration maintenance cost is high — and Adobe's core business is editing software subscriptions, not publishing infrastructure. Affinity has no cloud services at all. So the gap is structural: the companies best positioned to solve the export-to-publish handoff are precisely the ones with the least reason to maintain a live social API integration.

Existing scheduling tools treat images as generic uploads — they don't understand aspect ratio requirements per platform, don't warn you that a crop will be wrong for a Reel versus a feed post, and don't let you adjust the image before scheduling without leaving and re-exporting. The need recurs daily for social media managers and creators, and the cost of doing it wrong — a poorly cropped post going live to 50,000 followers — is immediate and visible.

What to build

Build a desktop and web app where users drag exported images in, get automatic crop previews per platform (Instagram feed, Reels, Facebook, Pinterest), make lightweight adjustments like crop and brightness without re-opening the original editor, write captions with character count per platform, schedule posts, and see basic per-post engagement pulled back after publishing.

Where to start

Start with photographers who sell presets or run paid communities and post consistently to Instagram — they have a clear, recurring publishing schedule and are already paying for multiple tools in this chain, so consolidation has obvious dollar value they can calculate themselves.

The hard part

Meta's API access for Instagram publishing requires app review and ongoing compliance, and the rules change without notice — a small team building on this API faces a real risk of disruption that is entirely outside their control, which makes it hard to promise reliability to paying customers.

How it makes money

Monthly subscription at $12–18/month per user, with a free tier limited to one connected account and 15 scheduled posts per month to drive trial among individual creators before moving upmarket to agencies paying per seat.