Macphun Tonality Pro Review

There is a decent range of vintage presets designed to make the photo look less digital and more from the back of drawer.

Turn to the dark side, with an app that’s all about the tones in your image, from classic black and white, to film stock emulation, HDR and vintage looks for portraits and landscapes.

Tonality Pro Features

• Presets make effects easy
• Variety of mono film stocks
• Vintage effects
• Control over tone, temperature and exposure
• Add lens blur, glow and split-toning
• Texture overlays and vignettes
• Photo frames
• Stack effects on layers

Tonality Pro Performance

If you’re a fan of black and white film then the shift to digital photography has probably been quite hard to take. Instead of all those lovely different film stocks with their various characteristics and grain, you’ve got colour where every image has the same look. So it’s down to post-production and filters to give an image that classic look and here Nik Software’s Silver Efex, Digital Film Tool’s Film Stocks and Alien Skin’s Exposure have come to the rescue. Now there’s another contender for your black and white visions in the form of Tonality from Macphun. This has a standard version which works as an app from the Mac App Store, or a Pro version which adds extra functionality and can work as an app or as a plug-in filter for Photoshop, Lightroom and Aperture.

The dark grey interface is very reminiscent of Alien Skin’s Exposure in fact, with the image being central and the main control dialogues running down the right side of the screen. The main difference is that the preset sections are jammed into a small box on the bottom right – click on this to see the options – while along the bottom are the previews for each preset. It does mean the left side of the screen is basically wasted space though.

Although Tonality Pro mostly deals with mono, it also has some colour functions as well. Here itÂ’s a HDR effect with subdued colours.

The presets are organised into basic, architecture, portrait, dramatic, outdoor, street, vintage, film emulation, toning, HDR and then favourite and user groups. This is an effective way to organise them and the effects on offer usually suit the subjects that they relate to. What the presets do of course is configure the options on the right, which you are free to tweak and change yourself. Come up with an interesting combination of effects and you can save it as your own preset.

The various parameter groups can all be turned on or off as you wish and cover colour temperature, tone, clarity and structure, colour filter, tone curve, split toning, glow, lens blur, texture overlay, vignette, grain, photo frames and layer properties. One of the interesting features is that there is a layer system so that different effects can be stacked together and blended using variable opacity or a basic range of blend modes.

If there’s one thing you can say about Tonality, it’s that it is quick. Select any preset and the previews appear almost instantly and the main screen is very fast at updating with the latest recipe of parameters. It’s certainly a lot quicker than Exposure which rapidly bogs down when faced with lots of previews.

Having applied a preset, the tone and exposure can then be tweaked to get exactly the result you want.

The main meat of the app is the tone and clarity and structure sections since these set the black and white conversion and affect how much detail and sharpness there is. They can be used to make an image as soft, punchy, or HDR-like as you want. Normally all the effects are applied instantly but if you switch to Brush mode, then the parameters are only applied where you brush them onto the image. The brush itself has controls for size, opacity and softness so after applying a general conversion you can tinker with brushing in certain effects. If you don’t like how it went, then an eraser can be used to brush the effects out again.

Even more dramatic is the ability to use a graduated fill of the effect. This has a centre point and two blend areas, all of which can be moved, rotated and expanded. Where this entire system loses its way somewhat is when you select a preset to give the image a look and then use a brush for another look. Instead of the brush mode automatically creating another layer, it becomes Layer 0 and is only visible where you painted it. The original image is now fixed to whatever preset you ran. Then, if you want to change the look by selecting another preset, this will only work on the areas where you applied brushwork. If you are going to do anything this complex, you need to create new layers for each stage of the project as you go along.

Texture overlays and borders can be used to add a vintage feel to your photos. Custom textures can also be used.

To really create old or grungy looking images then the texture overlay, vignette and grain sections are where you need to go. There are eight of each paper, metal and film texture overlays, so 24 in total, which is a decent amount and you can also load in your own. This certainly adds to the effects possible. The vignette is fairly standard and the option to mark the centre makes it more useful than if it was just the middle of the image. The grain options are a little disappointing as there are only sliders for amount, softness and contrast. Even Photoshop has more different types built in. The frames are also another area that needs improving as there are only 11 of these. You can adjust the width, but there’s no other variation option.

The addition of lens blur and glow means that you can soften and give your portraits a romantic feel to them.

What’s particularly noteworthy is that even the standard version of Tonality, which is only £12.99, can process RAW and 16-bit files and has over 150 presets. The Pro version does offer more, with plug-in support, more blend modes, extra layers and better control over vignettes, colour and processing. 

Tonality Pro Verdict

There’s no doubt that there is a lot of functionality here for quite a modest stake. The ability to use layers to stack effects and the texture overlays make it possible to get lots of creative effects. Some of the film emulation presets look pretty much like the others, but there are enough presets across the board to give you specific effects that suit everything from portraits to landscapes and HDR projects. It’s also a bonus that a number of effects actually use colour as well as mono. The app is fast at providing previews and has a lot of different looks it can bring to your projects. It’s not as wide ranging as Alien Skin’s Exposure but then it is a great deal cheaper and easily represents the best budget option for those wanting stylish or grungy black and white conversions.

Tonality Pro – Pros

Over 150 presets
Control over all the parameters
Layers with blend modes
Supports RAW and 16-bit
Extra effects from glow, lens blur and textures
Film emulations
Effects in colour as well
HDR effects

Tonality Pro – Cons

More film emulation presets needed
Brush mode structure is awkward
Not enough frames
Grain options crude

FEATURES
HANDLING
PERFORMANCE
VALUE FOR MONEY
VERDICT

Tonality Pro offers lots of creative effects, is fast and good value for money.