The best apps for black and white photos can completely transform your photography! Black and white is a classic look in photography, but it also helps you develop your camera skills. That’s why everyone should try their hand at black and white photography.
In this article, we went looking for the best black and white app for photography. Two different jobs hide behind that question. A camera app like Camera1 or Argentum Camera commits you to monochrome at the shutter, so you learn to read tone and contrast while you compose. An editor like Lightroom or Snapseed lets you shoot in color and decide afterward, which keeps the color file in reserve. If you only download one, make it Lightroom. It handles the conversion and the editing, and it asks the least of you on the way. The list below covers both kinds, best first.
Shooting Black and White with a Smartphone
Before we look at the best apps for black and white photos, we need to tell you how you can shoot in black and white using your smartphone’s native camera.
The native cameras on both iOS and Android phones allow you to make black and white photos without much difficulty.
Click the filter icon. It looks like three connected circles. Depending on your phone, you will have one or more monochrome filters.
The iPhone has three filters: Mono, Silvertone, and Noir. The newer iPhones have two more black and white options in the Portrait mode, Stage Light Mono and High-Key Light Mono. These options work best when taking portraits.
The native camera on your phone may not be the best black and white app, but it is available without a download.
But if you do want a better camera app for black and white photography, we’ve got all the best options in the list below. Keep reading to find the best smartphone app for incredible black and white photos.
Best Apps for Black and White Photos
Cameras and editors sit side by side in this list rather than in two separate piles. The right tool for black and white photos depends far more on how you like to work than on which of those two boxes it ticks. Each entry says which job it does.
Whether you like color or black and white photography, Lightroom Mobile is one of the best smartphone apps there is. It has a wide-ranging and sophisticated tool set, including excellent features for black and white photos.
Lightroom Mobile is an editing app rather than a camera app. But you can take black and white photos with your native camera and edit them in Lightroom. Or, you can upload color photos and transform them into black and white images in the app.
Converting a color photo to black and white is a simple procedure that only takes a second. Then you can use the editing tools to achieve the black and white aesthetic you’re looking for.
Adobe’s AI tools have grown a lot, and several of them earn their keep in mono. Quick Actions and Adaptive Presets read the picture and suggest the edit. Lens Blur softens the background behind a black and white portrait. Generative Remove erases the distraction that mono has just made more obvious, because stripping the color out of a scene is very good at drawing the eye to the litter bin you never noticed.
As with the full Lightroom software, you also get brush and masking tools for localized editing. You can heal and retouch specific areas, then apply one finished black and white look across a whole shoot in a single batch.
Lightroom is not the pick if you want the phone itself to shoot in monochrome. It is an editor first, and the deepest tools sit behind a Creative Cloud subscription. For mono at the shutter rather than after it, go to Camera1 or Argentum Camera below.
Camera1 is the best dedicated black and white photography app. With this app, your phone becomes a manual black and white camera.
You have full control over your exposure settings as well as manual focus adjustments.
Whenever you change exposure settings, a histogram pops up to guide your choice. Red zebra stripes appear if you are overexposing. A magnifying glass helps you focus.
You can lock in the settings to take a series of black and white images.
The Camera1 sliders let you manually control exposure and focus
You can shoot in various RAW formats, including ProRAW and DNG on supported iPhones. These keep the color information alongside the monochrome JPEG, so a shot you commit to black and white in the viewfinder is not locked there forever.
When you apply color filters to your photos, you can see the effect in real time. This shows you exactly how each filter affects the colors.
The Zen mode (Z) hides all the controls to let you focus on composition without distractions. It also has grid for composition, like the rule of thirds or golden triangles.
Camera1 app interface shows you live color filters simultaneously
The apps works with a range of image file types, including JPEG, TIFF, and RAW. This means you have maximum editing potential if you transfer your images to editing software like Adobe Lightroom.
You have to pay to download the app, which will put some people off. But it is the best dedicated app for black and white photography. It won’t be for everyone, but black and white photography enthusiasts will love it.
Download: iOS
Snapseed is a popular photo editing app. It is one of the best choices when converting color images to black and white. The app walks you through the process of editing your photo, starting with a filter and then a look.
The number of editing tools is impressive, allowing you to change nearly any aspect of your image.
Google rebuilt Snapseed, and the film tools are the part that matters here. The Film tool simulates historic stocks, Halation adds the highlight glow you get from analog lenses, Bloom gives light sources a soft diffusion, and Grain finishes the job. Tonality lifts detail out of shadows, midtones, and highlights separately, which is most of black and white editing in one panel. Double Exposure is still there for layering a second frame.
Snapseed app interface showing filters under four of the tools: Looks, Vintage, Grunge, and Noir
The dedicated Black & White tool handles the straight conversion, and the film simulations give your shots a classic aesthetic, as if you were shooting with an analog camera and a roll of B&W film. One-touch masking will isolate a subject from its background in a tap, which is worth a lot once the color cue is gone.
Snapseed is a great app if you like black and white portraiture. The lens blur tools give you a gorgeous bokeh effect, making your smartphone portraits look professional.
Snapseed also shoots now. The built-in camera captures straight into your chosen film look, so the app covers both jobs on this page. And it is genuinely free: no subscription, no in-app purchases, no ads, no watermark.
The rebuild is the catch. Long-standing filters including Retrolux, Grunge, Noir, and Grainy Film are gone from the current tool list. If your editing routine was built on those specific presets, the app you reinstall in 2026 is not the one you remember.
Hypocam, from XnView, is a free black and white app built around a set of monochrome filters and textures. More are available through the in-app store.
On top of the basic filters, you can add a color filter to emphasize or minimize certain colors in the scene. Once you have taken the photos, you can apply texture, grain, vignette, and fade to get the look you want.
The app also gives you custom camera settings, giving you more creative control when taking pictures.
Hypocam also works as a black and white filter app. You can apply the filters to color photos in your camera roll and edit the effect in the app.
This app is an easy and flexible tool. You can expand your filter collection, and the editing functions are simple yet powerful.
It also has social media integration, making it easy to share your best black and white photos on Instagram or Facebook.
The iPhone build has not been updated since 2021, while the Android version is still getting releases. It runs, but it is not the app on this list getting the most attention from its developer.
The Black and White Camera app is the quickest route from shutter to social post. The sharing tools hand a finished B&W image straight to Instagram, Facebook, or X without a round trip through your camera roll.
Black and White Camera lets you take photos with black and white film effects. Some filters simulate the look of damaged film with flares, discolorations, and scratches on negatives. If you are going for an old film vintage look, this is your app.
There are many filters included, and you can buy more in-app. The app works with your phone's camera. But you can also apply the filters to images on your camera roll.
The free version watermarks your images, and the popup ads genuinely get in the way of composing a shot. If you like it, you will want to upgrade.
The iPhone build has had no update since late 2023, and the filters are fun rather than precise. It earns its place for speed and sharing, not for image quality. If the picture matters more than the post, Carbon or Dramatic Black & White will treat it better.
Carbon, by Livintis W.L.L., is an elegant black and white photography app. You can edit your own photos or practice on the demo portraits it ships with. The app leans toward portraits, but the filters work on any style of photograph.
Start with the included monochromatic filters. You can adjust how much of the filter shows through.
There are 58 black and white filters in total, and tapping one cycles through its variations rather than making you hunt through sliders. That is the whole design idea here: pick a look, refine it, move on. If you want a rack of manual controls, this is the wrong app and Lightroom is the right one.
On top of the filters you can layer grain, dust, grunge, light leak, and bokeh textures, then add a border and choose the blending mode it uses. It reads RAW files from a DSLR as well as phone shots.
Some of the effects are free. Others are available to buy through the app. The filter packs can be pricy. But this is one of the best apps for black and white photos.
You can only export your own images, but the demo portraits will help you edit like a pro.
Download: iOS
The entire Classic Camera app experience is retro. The graphics look like they came straight out of the ’60s. It isn’t an exclusively black and white app, but it does have excellent B&W effects.
You can select a look or choose an analog camera simulation. You can also build your own vintage camera simulation with different lenses and film options.
After you take a photo, you can apply various filters or presets. This is a paid download rather than a free app with a subscription attached, and the price covers 12 signature presets plus a Darkroom suite of more than 20 adjustment tools. You can still buy extra lens, film, and flash packs on top.
You can also save custom presets if you like the results of your manual adjustments.
A wide tool set gives you options to adjust clarity, definition, exposure, grain, texture, and more. You can also crop and rotate, as well as add a fade or vignette.
You can also make more minor tweaks using the RGB curve tool.
Classic Camera does far more than black and white, and that is the honest reason to skip it. You are paying for a whole analog simulation, so if all you want is a clean mono conversion you are buying a lot of app you will not open. But if you like a vintage look to your images, this is the one that gets you there.
Download: iOS
Dramatic Black & White is a powerful photo editing app by JixiPix Software. It is an iPhone and iPad app, with no Android version. Select an image from your phone to start applying filters.
The purchased app comes with dozens of black and white filters, including many infrared filters. It also has the special Dramatic Black and White filter that has ultra-high definition. The results are really impressive for a smartphone camera.
A randomize button lets you try out different ones to see what works best. You can also customize the filters. You can change color tone, softness, brightness, and contrast.
You can also add color filters and grain. What makes this app unique is the ability to add spotlights.
These are extra areas of light and shadow that you can resize, tilt, and strengthen as you like. You can layer several spotlights for a more complex effect.
It’s a simple app that doesn’t have some of the more advanced editing tools of the other apps. But the finished black and white images are excellent. The app really understands B&W editing and the types of things photographers are looking for.
Download: iOS
BlackCam, by XnView, lets you make a black and white photo using adjustable filters shown live on the camera screen. It is sold as BlackCam on iPhone and BlackCam Pro on Android.
The filters simulate classic black and white looks, including color lens filter effects. You also have film photography filters that give your images a grainy retro look.
There are a few pro filters you can add as purchasable upgrades, but most come free in the app.
BlackCam app interface showing four of the filters: Noir, Fade 2, Selenium, and Low Contrast
Click the plus button, and you have even more control over your photos. Use sliders to change exposure, vignette, fade, and the amount of desaturation.
You can pass finished images straight to your social profiles, and it writes a custom EXIF artist credit into the file, which is a small thing but useful if you post your work anywhere.
It doesn’t have the most complete tool set, but the conversions themselves are excellent and the app makes them quick.
The reason it sits this far down the list is maintenance. The Android version had an update in 2025, but the iPhone build has not been touched since 2019. It still works, and it is still a fine converter. It is just no longer being developed on that platform, so buy it knowing that.
Argentum Camera simulates the look of famous black and white photographers. There are six filters, modelled on Ansel Adams, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Irving Penn, Garry Winogrand, Yousuf Karsh, and Dorothea Lange. It was built with street photographers in mind and it won a Red Dot Award for the interface.
The app is free to download and comes with the Ansel Adams filter. The rest are in-app purchases. Every look is processed in real time, so the Adams landscape treatment or the Penn portrait tones are on screen while you are still composing.
Read the introductions for each of the filters. There is a lot of information about the photographer and how they achieved their specific black and white aesthetic.
There are many adjustments hidden within the app. You can adjust the exposure, shoot in Live mode, use a flash or constant light, change orientation and aspect ratio, and choose to shoot in JPEG or RAW.
In a nice twist, the DBLEXP setting lets you layer two frames into a double exposure with a real-time preview. Underexpose both shots, or the combined frame blows out.
A street shooting mode turns the whole screen into one shutter button, which is the feature that justifies the app if you shoot candidly. It saves to JPEG, HEIC, TIFF, or RAW. What it will not do is edit: there is no adjustment panel here at all, so pair it with Snapseed or Lightroom rather than expecting it to finish the job.
Download: iOS
Taken on iPhone by Adlan
Frequently Asked Questions
What Is the Best Free App for Black and White Photos?
Snapseed. It is free in the strict sense, with no subscription, no in-app purchases, no ads, and no watermark on what you export. You get film simulations, Halation, Bloom, Grain, a dedicated Black & White tool, and Tonality for shadows, midtones, and highlights. Nothing else on this list gives away that much.
Do I Need a Black and White Camera App, or Can I Convert Afterward?
Both work, and they teach different things. Shooting through a mono viewfinder in Camera1 or Argentum Camera forces you to judge a scene on tone, contrast, and shape while you still have the option to move. Converting later in Lightroom or Snapseed keeps the color file, so you can change your mind. Beginners learn faster with a camera app. Working photographers usually shoot color and decide at the edit.
Which of These Apps Work on Android?
Five of the ten. Lightroom, Snapseed, Hypocam, Black and White Camera, and BlackCam Pro all have Android versions. Camera1, Carbon, Classic Camera, Dramatic Black & White, and Argentum Camera are iPhone only, and there is no Android equivalent from those developers.
Should I Shoot RAW for Black and White?
Yes, if the app lets you. Camera1 saves JPEG, TIFF, RAW, and ProRAW, and Argentum Camera saves JPEG, HEIC, TIFF, and RAW. A RAW file keeps the color data behind the monochrome preview, which is what lets you push a red filter effect to darken a sky later. Shoot a mono JPEG and that information is gone for good.
Conclusion
Our favourite black and white app is Adobe Lightroom Mobile, for the depth of its tool set and because it is the only one here that will still be the right answer in five years.
If you would rather not pay anything, download Snapseed. It converts, it shoots, and it costs nothing at all. If you want to learn to see in black and white rather than edit your way there, buy Camera1 and shoot with it for a month. If you want a look with as few decisions as possible, Carbon gets you there in two taps.
Then do the part no app does for you. Pick one subject, shoot it in mono for a week, and pay attention to where the light stops and the shadow starts. The apps are quick to learn. Seeing in black and white takes longer, and it is the half that shows.
