What happened
Film director Rian Johnson, known for Knives Out and The Last Jedi, has released Chromagraph Camera, an iOS app priced at $13 that he built with his longtime cinematographer Steve Yedlin, The Verge reported. The app sidesteps parts of Apple's own image processing and applies the same grade the pair use on Johnson's films.
The app works both as a camera and as an editor. Shooting options include a cap on exposure time, burst capture and color tuning, and users can also import RAW photos taken earlier and adjust tone, color, saturation and texture. The interface still appears rough in places, with some controls sitting in unexpected spots.
Johnson said he always has his phone with him, unlike his cameras, and that earlier attempts to edit iPhone shots in Snapseed and third-party RAW apps left him spending too long adjusting each image. Chromagraph spread widely on social media over the weekend, with early users comparing its output favorably to Apple's defaults.
Context
Johnson regularly documents his sets on film with a Leica M6. Yedlin, who argues that the right algorithms can make digital images indistinguishable from film, wrote color grading scripts a few years ago to give Johnson's movies a celluloid look, later applied to stills. Phone makers have moved in a similar direction: the iPhone 18 Pro offers grain, halation and film effects in a texture panel, and the Pixel 11 has a Camera Looks panel.
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