When a Hollywood director decides the iPhone's camera doesn't look enough like his movies, he doesn't just complain about it — he builds an app. That's exactly how Chromagraph came to be, and after spending some time with it, I can say it's one of the most interesting photography apps to hit the iPhone in years.
Not long ago, a new photography app started making waves online. The app, Chromagraph, arrived with an unusual pedigree for a piece of mobile software.
The reveal came from one of its co-creators directly. Rian Johnson — the writer and director known for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Looper, and the Knives Out films — took to social media to explain that he'd been craving an iPhone camera app that skipped Apple's signature image processing and delivered photos with the same character as his movies.
So I recently badgered my cinematographer @steveyedlin into making my ideal iPhone still camera app. It shoots RAW, bypasses the iPhone's look processing and instead uses the same image processing we use on our movies. https://t.co/makZzhFd2Q
— Rian Johnson (@rianjohnson) October 28, 2026
To bring the idea to life, Johnson turned to Steve Yedlin, the cinematographer behind every one of his films, and together they enlisted their friend Eric Cameron to actually build the software. The result of that collaboration is Chromagraph.
What sets Chromagraph apart from the average iPhone camera app is its approach. Rather than leaning on Apple's imaging pipeline and slapping a filter over the top, it pulls in raw sensor data and runs it through a custom pipeline built around the color science Johnson and Yedlin developed for their films. There's room for some personal adjustment, but the fundamental aesthetic is baked in — it's the look its creators wanted, take it or leave it.
Still from Rian Johnson's latest film, 'Wake Up Dead Man'
I ran the app through its paces on the iPhone 18 Pro. The interface is stripped back, dressed in black and gold, and anyone who has used a smartphone camera will feel at home immediately. This is deliberately not a "pro" app drowning you in toggles and dials — it's designed to do one thing well, and everything on screen serves that purpose.
Dig into the settings and you'll find options for how photos are stored, your preferred aspect ratio, which lens is the default, export formats, and compression levels. You can also tweak the baseline look of your images, which I'll get into shortly.
Chromagraph UI and settings
Photos taken with Chromagraph live in the app as RAW files. An automatic JPEG export is available, though I preferred manually exporting only the keepers. Opening a photo reveals a modest but useful editing toolkit: exposure, contrast, shadow and highlight recovery, white balance, saturation, film grain, halation, and cropping. You can even set a default crop factor for shooting, with the viewfinder updating to match. Because everything is RAW, crops are non-destructive — the full sensor readout is always there if you change your mind.
Think of Chromagraph's adjustments as seasoning rather than a new recipe. The core aesthetic echoes Johnson and Yedlin's filmography: warm, lush tones, deep color, and a gentle halation that blooms around bright areas. Their movies aren't shot on film, but they're crafted to feel like they were — and that's precisely what this app attempts to bottle for the iPhone.
Chromagraph samples (shot on the iPhone 18 Pro)
Straight out of the app, every frame carries that signature warmth with an appealing golden cast. Chromagraph has no interest in rescuing every highlight or lifting every shadow to satisfy some technical checklist. Bright edges glow softly. Fine detail comes through exactly as the sensor and glass render it, free of heavy-handed sharpening. There's visible noise — some organic, some deliberately introduced — and it all adds up to images that aim for emotional resonance over clinical perfection.
When conditions suit it, the output can be gorgeous — but those conditions matter. Chromagraph thrives in sunshine and punchy, high-contrast environments. Hand it good natural light and it will reward you with frame-worthy shots. The stock tuning doesn't bend much, so scenes either sing or fall flat. That said, when the light is close to what the app wants, a little post-shot adjustment can rescue a lot, and you can permanently nudge the default settings to taste.
Reaching the app's limits doesn't take long, though. Indoors under artificial light — fluorescent lighting in particular — the default output can look genuinely strange, sometimes verging on ugly. Salvaging those shots means overriding the app's instincts and dialing in cooler tones yourself so its built-in warmth doesn't fight the ambient light.
iPhone stock vs Chromagraph look
The out-of-box color grade leans muted and slightly desaturated, so vibrant subjects like food or colorful clothing won't pop unless you push the saturation slider hard. You're probably better off steering clear of those subjects entirely — unless understated is what you're after.
The software itself has some rough edges too. Jumping into a photo you've taken is seamless, but getting back to shooting means hunting for a fiddly little camera button up top. The app has no memory of your last-used lens — every gallery visit resets you to the main camera (or whatever default you've configured). And the viewfinder occasionally crawled to life on my iPhone 18 Pro, sometimes refusing to load altogether.
Chromagraph's anamorphic 2.39:1 aspect ratio
All of this makes Chromagraph a decidedly situational tool. It can feel awkward, and its signature look flatters some subjects while betraying others. And yet, it's the most enjoyable shooting experience I've had on a phone in a long while. There's something creatively liberating about working inside firm constraints — the limitations push you to see differently. The app has also been receiving steady updates since Johnson's announcement tweet, so some of these complaints may already be resolved.
Should this be your go-to iPhone camera app? Definitely not — and it isn't trying to be. Apps like Halide and Mood already serve photographers who want clean, unprocessed RAW files to shape themselves. Chromagraph exists to deliver one very specific vision. If that vision speaks to you, it's well worth the download.
