By Graham K. Rogers

Ready for the update to OS X 10.11, El Capitan, one of the first of the 3rd-party updates to arrive is Macphun's Tonality, now at version 1.3.0.

This is one of the earliest of the apps I have seen that adds an extension: the ability to use 3rd party customization features from within applications. In the case of Tonality this adds an extension to Photos and will allow the user to work in the application directly from Photos.

The update was just over 200 MB and once it was installed, I clicked on the "More" icon in the list of editing features (Enhance, Rotate, Crop, Filters, Adjust and Retouch) and then on the More icon that appeared: this reminds me of similar features in Photos on the iPhone. A panel in System Preferences > Extensions opened. I activated Tonality by checking the box by the application name.

I had already been using a plug-in for Tonality Pro with Aperture, but this behaves slightly differently, although image output is just as stunning. While the plug-in opened Tonality Pro as a separate app, clicking on the Tonality icon within More opens a panel within Photos. Any adjustments are applied to the image and this is saved within Photos.

With Aperture and the Tonality Pro plug-in, a separate image is created. Adjustments are made in Tonality Pro, then saved to Aperture. The original image is still visible. In Photos it is always possible to Revert to Original using the Edit function.

This sort of feature, extending the editing possibilities within the (up to now) fairly basic Photos, bodes well for the future. The more of these extensions that arrive, the happier I will be.

Graham K. Rogers teaches at the Faculty of Engineering, Mahidol University in Thailand. He wrote in the Bangkok Post, Database supplement on IT subjects. For the last seven years of Database he wrote a column on Apple and Macs. He is now continuing that in the Bangkok Post supplement, Life.