Rian Johnson, the director behind the “Knives Out” films, has released an iPhone camera app that gives phone photos the color treatment of his movies. He announced Chromagraph Camera on X on Oct. 28, and it quickly climbed to the top of the App Store’s paid Photo & Video chart.
Johnson said he “badgered” his longtime cinematographer, Steve Yedlin, into building the app for his own use. Yedlin developed it with color-science programmer Eric Cameron, and the pair then decided to release it publicly. It costs $12.99, carries no in-app purchases and requires iOS 17 or later.
Chromagraph skips Apple’s standard computational rendering. The app captures raw sensor data and applies its own processing, which Yedlin adapted from the math he uses on feature films. The look emphasizes particular handling of color, tone, grain and halation, the soft glow around bright highlights. Users can adjust color, tone and texture, keep the untouched raw file in the app’s gallery and export finished images as JPEG or HEIC.
The release grows out of a position Yedlin has argued for years in widely shared video demonstrations: a film’s look depends on how images are processed, and the camera that records them matters less. Yedlin has shot every Johnson feature since “Brick” in 2005, including “The Last Jedi” and, most recently, “Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery.”
Reaction among filmmakers has been warm, and some see the app as a rare consumer product built on professional color science. Photographers who want a neutral or natural rendering may find less to like. One review noted that the cinematic look will not suit every taste, and the app’s design reflects a specific aesthetic rather than a range of styles. The app also covers still photography only. It does not record video.
Johnson and Yedlin have not announced plans for an Android version or a video update. For now, the app gives iPhone owners a way to shoot with the same color pipeline that shaped three Netflix-backed murder mysteries, at roughly the price of a movie ticket.
