Silver Efex Pro 2
Silver Efex Pro 2 is a black-and-white image processor and plugin for macOS, developed by Google as part of the Nik Collection (formerly created by Nik Software before Google's 2014 acquisition). It offers a wide range of controls for converting color photos to grayscale, applying film emulations, adjusting tonality and contrast, and fine-tuning grain and other effects. It is used by photographers, retouchers and designers as both a standalone application and as a plugin for Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom. The app was last updated in 2019 and Google discontinued active development of the Nik Collection in favor of web-based tools.
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1 suggestionSilver Efex Pro 2 has not been updated since 2019 and Google has since discontinued the Nik Collection desktop suite. There is no native Apple Silicon build available, and the app relies on Rosetta 2 to run on M-series Macs today. Apple is removing Rosetta 2 in macOS 28 (September 2028), so this app will stop launching entirely on that release unless Google ships a native build before then — which is extremely unlikely given that the product has been abandoned for years. If you rely on Silver Efex Pro 2 for black-and-white editing, begin planning your migration now. Modern alternatives that run natively on Apple Silicon include Capture One Pro (a professional photo editor with excellent black-and-white tools and plugin support), DxO PhotoLab (which includes black-and-white profiles and film simulations), Affinity Photo 2 (a native Photoshop alternative with comparable tone-curve and grain controls), or Adobe Lightroom if you prefer a subscription-based cloud workflow. For hobbyists, open-source tools like Darktable also have native Apple Silicon builds. If you depend on Silver Efex Pro's specific film emulations, Capture One Pro's Film renderings are widely considered a worthy successor.
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