Rian Johnson's Chromagraph App Gives iPhone Photos a Movie Look — for $12.99

A new iPhone camera app is getting attention for an unusual reason: it was built to make phone photos look like a Hollywood movie. Chromagraph comes from writer-director Rian Johnson, best known for Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Looper and the Knives Out films, who wanted an iPhone app that would skip the phone's default image processing and instead produce the look of his own films.

Johnson put the question to his cinematographer, Steve Yedlin, who has shot every one of his films, and the two brought in their friend Eric Cameron to build it. Johnson is listed in the app's credits as a creative consultant, though he is not the developer himself. The idea took off after Johnson posted about it on X last week, and the app has since climbed to second place on the App Store's Photo and Video chart.

One look, decided in advance

Chromagraph works differently from most camera apps. Instead of capturing a finished image and then adding a filter, it takes the raw data from the sensor and runs it through its own processing pipeline, using the colour science Johnson and Yedlin use on their films. The result is a single, pre-decided look — lush and warm, with rich colours, a golden undertone and a soft glow around bright areas — that can be tuned slightly but not changed into something else.

The makers are clear about what the app is not: there is no AI, no filters and no presets. It is built around one specific look, and that is the point. For anyone who wants a range of styles to choose from, it will not be the right app.

How it handles in use

The app itself is deliberately simple, with a minimal black-and-gold interface. Settings cover the save format, aspect ratio, default lens, export format and compression quality. Photos are saved inside the app as RAW files, with an option to save a JPEG automatically as well. After shooting, you can adjust exposure, contrast, shadows and highlights, white balance, saturation, film grain, halation and cropping, and a crop-factor setting controls how much of the image is cropped by default. The viewfinder shows the crop — an anamorphic 2.39:1 ratio features in the examples — and the crop can be undone on the RAW file.

In testing on an iPhone 18 Pro, the app performed best on sunny days and in high-contrast scenes, where it produced rich, warm, film-like colours with a soft bloom around bright edges. It had a harder time indoors under fluorescent lighting and on overcast days, and its default tuning felt a little understated and undersaturated. There is no artificial sharpening, and the grain in the images is natural rather than added on. For straightforward RAW capture with no processing at all, apps like Halide and Mood do a similar job — the difference is that Chromagraph is built for one particular look.

The test also turned up a few annoyances: getting back to the viewfinder means tapping a small camera button in the bottom-left corner, the app does not remember the last camera used, and the viewfinder can be slow to load, sometimes failing to load at all. The app has been receiving regular updates since Johnson's post, so some of those issues may already be fixed.

Price and availability

Chromagraph costs $12.99 as a one-time purchase on the App Store, with no subscription. It takes still photos only for now, though Johnson has said video support could arrive later, most likely limited to newer iPhone models. There is no Android version, and Johnson has said the app will probably stay exclusive to Apple devices, because the consistency of Apple's hardware is what lets the small team tune the look with confidence, while Android devices vary too much.

For photographers who like the warm, cinematic style of Johnson and Yedlin's films, Chromagraph offers that look straight out of the camera. For everyone else, its single-mindedness is the trade-off: one look, done well, and little else.

Sources

• GSMArena — We checked out Chromagraph, Rian Johnson's viral iPhone camera app
• AppleInsider — Chromagraph brings Hollywood color processing to iPhone
• Gizmodo — 'The Last Jedi' Director Launches a New Camera App for iPhone