Tonality
Tonality is an award-winning black-and-white and monochrome photo editing application for macOS, specializing in converting and enhancing grayscale images. It offers stackable layers, a native 16-bit RAW processor, authentic film effects, lens blur, structure and detail adjustment tools, and a library of over 150 professional presets. The app integrates as a plug-in with Adobe Photoshop, Lightroom, Photoshop Elements, and Apple Aperture, making it popular with photographers who want dedicated monochrome editing capabilities without leaving their main workflow.
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1 suggestionTonality has not been updated since October 2016 — the latest known version is 1.4.2, released nine years ago. There is no evidence of a native Apple Silicon build, and given the length of time without updates, it appears the project has been abandoned by MacPhun Software. The Intel-only build continues to run under Rosetta 2 today, but Apple is removing Rosetta in macOS 28 (September 2028), meaning Tonality will stop launching entirely on that release. If you rely on Tonality for black-and-white work, you should begin exploring alternatives now. Lightroom's dedicated black-and-white adjustment panels and HSL sliders are a solid built-in option if you shoot in Lightroom already. For more specialized monochrome editing, consider Capture One, which runs natively on Apple Silicon and offers powerful RAW processing and film-emulation tools. Affinity Photo 2 is another actively maintained native option with comprehensive black-and-white conversion and creative effects. Both are significantly more modern than Tonality and will continue to work after September 2028.
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