Self-hosted / open sourcePhoto & VideoHeadquarters: DE

Black&White projects: sovereignty score and 8 European alternatives

Black&White projects is a desktop program for editing black-and-white photographs. It runs as a standalone application or as a filter plug-in for Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom, and is sold for macOS and Windows. The product page describes it as a tool for optimising and editing monochrome photos, and the version named there is 6. Editing takes place on the user's own computer, so photos do not need to be uploaded to a service to be processed. The software is published under the Black&White projects name by the Franzis publishing house.

Franzis is based in Haar, near Munich. Its legal notice names FRANZIS GmbH as the operator. The notice names no foreign owner or parent company, and the site states no shareholders. Because the program is installed locally, photo files and edits stay on the user's device. The publisher's own web services and accounts are separate, and their data terms should be checked. For a European organisation, this is a German publisher offering a desktop tool, with processing kept on the user's side.

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Sovereignty score

80 / 1000 = high exposure
100 = sovereign

Jurisdiction SOV-2100
Headquartered in the EU: European law applies
Data residency SOV-3100
EU-only hosting
Cryptographic key sovereignty SOV-380
Closed source, but self-hostable: encryption keys and runtime under your own control
Freedom from lock-in SOV-640
Closed source: switching requires data migration
Source & runtime sovereignty SOV-4 · SOV-680
Closed source, but self-hostable on your own infrastructure

SOV codes: the matching objective in the European Commission's Cloud Sovereignty Framework. Official source

How the score is calculated

Facts and evidence

Last checked October 12, 2026

Headquarters	DE (EU)Verified by hand
Data hosting	Self-hosted, e.g. in EU (your choice)Verified by hand
Open-source	NoVerified by hand
GDPR-compliant	NoVendor-stated
Category	Photo & Video
Type	Product
Website	franzis.de ↗

How we verify · Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Top EU-based & GDPR-compliant alternatives to Black&White projects

The European alternatives to Black&White projects come from our knowledge base of over 7,800 vendors. We only list vendors headquartered in the EU or the EEA; fully European-owned vendors rank before vendors with a foreign owner. For each alternative you see the country, the open-source status and a short description.

Score per alternative: 0 = high exposure, 100 = sovereign

20 European Photo & Video vendors are in the catalogue. View the whole category · Submit an alternative · View category on the map

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Why digital sovereignty matters with Black&White projects

Black&White projects is headquartered in DE and therefore falls under European law: the GDPR, NIS2 and the Data Act. No foreign legislation can compel access to your data.

Black&White projects runs on infrastructure you choose and control yourself. You decide where the data lives, including fully within the EU if you want — this is not a fixed hosting choice made by the vendor.

Black&White projects is closed source, but you run the software yourself on your own infrastructure. The encryption keys and the runtime therefore stay under your own control, though you cannot audit or modify the source code. Ask about export options and open standards to limit software-level lock-in.

What this means for your organisation depends on your whole stack and context. The free assessment weighs Black&White projects together with your other vendors and gives a total score, a heatmap and the main risk drivers.

Frequently asked questions

What is the best European alternative to Black&White projects?

It depends on your use case. Strong EU alternatives to Black&White projects include Blender Video Editor, Colorfront and darktable. On this page you can compare 8 EU alternatives by jurisdiction, data residency and open-source status.

Are there open-source alternatives to Black&White projects?

Yes. Open-source EU alternatives to Black&White projects include Blender Video Editor, darktable, digiKam and Kdenlive. These keep your data fully under your own control and let you self-host if you want to.

Is Black&White projects GDPR-compliant and where is the data hosted?

Black&White projects is headquartered in DE (EU) and hosts data in EU. That makes Black&White projects an EU-sovereign choice in its own right; the EU alternatives on this page are comparable European tools.

Details and sources

Verified by handHeadquarters, owner, hosting locations and licence have been checked by us against public sources. Free of charge and for every vendor, not a paid label. Nothing in this knowledge base is taken over automatically. Last checked on October 12, 2026.

Sources

Public sources used in the latest check of this record.

Compliance evidence

The links below point to the vendor's own public documents. We only record what we found: a missing link means "not found publicly", not "not compliant".

No public compliance evidence has been recorded for this vendor yet. Do you know its DPA or subprocessor list? Something wrong? Suggest a correction

Digital sovereignty in Photo & Video

Photo & Video: Photo editing, video editing, colour grading and media production. In this category the choice of vendor determines who has legal access to your data, where that data lives and how easily you can switch later.

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