ToneLoupe is a floating loupe for your Mac. Drag it over any image on screen — your NLE, your photo editor, even a browser — and it reads the pixels underneath in real time. No plugins, no signal chain, no export.
Your scopes live in a corner of the interface and read the whole frame. Your client looks at one thing only: the face.
A floating frame that sits above every app. Park it on a face — its interior stays click-through, so you keep grading underneath.
Yellow: skin sits on the vectorscope skin-tone line. Green or pink: it's drifting, and you see exactly where on the face.
The panel's vectorscope and RGB parade read only the loupe region — the face, not the furniture. By how much, at a glance.
The loupe analyzes only the region under it, on the GPU, at up to 30 fps — light enough to leave on all day.
Pixels on the skin-tone line read yellow; hue drift shows as green or pink — on the face itself, not in a corner of your eye.
Luminance mapped to false color with the skin target on the yellow band and clipping in red. Ride your key light without leaving the frame.
A vectorscope with the skin-tone line and an RGB parade, reading the loupe region — always the original pixels, never the false color.
| ToneLoupe | Built-in NLE scopes | Dedicated scope apps | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Works over any app on screen | ✓ | — | — |
| False color on the face itself | ✓ | — | — |
| Reads only the region you choose | ✓ | Whole frame | Whole frame |
| Setup | None | Built in | Signal routing |
| Price | $19.99 once | Included | $100+ |
ToneLoupe doesn't replace your NLE's scopes for final QC — it puts a skin-focused read where your eyes already are, in every app on your Mac.
ToneLoupe has just launched — notes from working colorists will appear here as they come in. If ToneLoupe caught something your eyes missed, we'd love to hear about it.
Send feedbackOr buy direct — instant license key, 7-day free trial.
Analyzing the pixels under the loupe is the product — the permission is how macOS allows an app to read the screen. Frames are analyzed on the GPU and discarded immediately; nothing is recorded or transmitted. See the privacy policy.
No — the loupe's interior passes clicks through to the app below. Only the border band takes the mouse (outer edge resizes, inner edge moves), and Lock makes the whole loupe click-through.
The loupe reads the actual pixels your display is showing and evaluates them against the standard vectorscope skin-tone line. Use it as a live early-warning system and a region-focused read; your calibrated pipeline remains the reference for final QC.
macOS 14 (Sonoma) or later, Apple silicon and Intel. Performance cost is roughly 3% CPU at the default 15 fps.
Yes — the loupe and panel float above fullscreen apps and follow you across Spaces. The global shortcut (default ⌃⌥⌘S, changeable) hides everything to the menu bar and brings it back.
None. No accounts, no analytics, no network code. Frames are analyzed on your Mac's GPU and discarded — nothing ever leaves your computer.
TONELOUPE