Steve Yedlin, cinematographer of Rian Johnson's Knives Out films, has built his own camera app for the iPhone together with developer Eric Cameron. Chromagraph Camera replaces the iPhone's image processing with the color grading and film grain that Yedlin uses for Johnson's films.
Johnson and Yedlin presented the app on X on October 28. Chromagraph has been in the App Store since October 20, including in Germany.
What does Chromagraph do differently from Apple's camera app?
Apple's camera app sharpens photos after the fact, automatically balances highlights and shadows, and digitally filters out image noise. The US film outlet No Film School sees this as the reason for the typically digital look of many phone photos. Chromagraph skips these steps and instead applies Yedlin's color transformations to the sensor data. The image style is thus created while the raw data is being developed, rather than sitting as a filter on top of a finished iPhone photo.
When taking photos, the app is reminiscent of a film camera: in the viewfinder you only frame the image, and you only see the finished look after the shot in the app's gallery. There you adjust color, exposure, grain, and halation. Halation is the glowing fringe around bright areas of an image that analog film produces. Chromagraph saves the raw files in full quality; you export smaller files as JPEG or HEIC to the photo library, automatically after each shot if you wish.
Which iPhones does Chromagraph run on, and how much does the app cost?
Chromagraph requires iOS 17 and therefore runs on the iPhone XR, the iPhone XS, and all newer models. Since version 1.1.3 from October 23, the app also supports the foldable iPhone Duo. You pay for the app once at purchase; the App Store lists no subscription or in-app purchases. According to the privacy information there, Chromatic Applications, the company behind the app, collects no data.
Only photos can be captured. According to No Film School, Johnson holds out the prospect of video for later, then presumably only for the newest Pro models. An Android version has not been announced; Johnson justifies this by the uniform hardware of iPhones, which a small team can cover. On October 29, Chromagraph ranked number 1 in the Photo & Video category in the German App Store; the store showed no reviews yet.
How does Chromagraph differ from Halide?
With the camera app Halide Mark III, too, you can turn off the iPhone's image processing: the Process Zero mode forgoes AI and computational image enhancement, and there are also film looks by the colorist Cullen Kelly and manual tools such as focus peaking. Chromagraph limits itself to a single look with a few controls.
Chromagraph Camera
Halide Mark III
Payment
one-time purchase
free download with in-app purchases
Interface language
English
German and ten other languages
Image style
one look by Steve Yedlin, controls for color, exposure, grain, and halation
Process Zero and looks by Cullen Kelly
What this means for you
If you shoot a lot with your iPhone and are bothered by the smooth, heavily sharpened look, it's worth testing with subjects you know well: backlighting, evening moods, skin tones. Because the look only appears after the shot, it's best to photograph a few scenes in parallel with the normal camera app and compare afterward. No Film School recommends Chromagraph mainly for reference photos and location scouting, because the images show how a place looks with the color processing of a feature film.
If you edit your phone photos in Lightroom or another app anyway, it's best to check before buying whether the fixed image style is enough for you. According to the App Store description, Chromagraph passes fully developed JPEG or HEIC files on to the photo library; Chromatic Applications does not mention an export of the raw files. How to specifically edit phone photos in apps is shown in the course on smartphone photography.
Rian Johnson and Steve Yedlin presented Chromagraph Camera on X on October 28, 2026.
