ImageJ
ImageJ is a free, open-source image analysis and processing platform developed by the National Institutes of Health. It is widely used by researchers, microscopists, biologists and engineers for quantitative image measurement, batch processing, image filtering and statistical analysis. ImageJ supports a wide range of formats and can be extended with plugins and macros. Fiji is the most popular ImageJ distribution, bundling hundreds of community-contributed plugins and making it the standard choice for scientific image analysis workflows.
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1 suggestionFiji, the bundled distribution of ImageJ, officially supports native Apple Silicon since the downloads page now explicitly lists "macOS 11 Big Sur or later, Apple Silicon or Intel" alongside Intel-only variants. However, the standard download from imagej.net still serves the Intel build by default. Community users have successfully run Fiji natively on M-series Macs, and Fiji's download page confirms native arm64 support is available. To get the native build: visit https://imagej.net/software/fiji/downloads and look for the macOS download marked as supporting Apple Silicon — this will be the native arm64 version. If you download the generic macOS installer and it launches under Rosetta, check the Fiji downloads page again for architecture-specific builds, as the project distinguishes between Intel and Apple Silicon downloads. A native build offers substantial performance improvements (roughly 10x faster in some workflows according to community reports) compared to running the Intel version under Rosetta. Since Apple is removing Rosetta 2 in macOS 28 (September 2028), switching to the native version now ensures your workflow will continue uninterrupted.
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