Rian Johnson has built Chromagraph Camera, a $13 iOS app designed to give iPhone photos the film-inspired look he uses in his movies. He developed it with longtime cinematographer Steve Yedlin, whose image-processing tools have helped shape the color of Johnson’s films.
Johnson, who is known for carrying a Leica M6 and shooting on film, said using a phone is often more convenient. He wanted an easier way to make iPhone images resemble his preferred look without editing every picture by hand.
Before making the app, Johnson tried taking photos with the iPhone’s default camera and adjusting them in Snapseed. He later experimented with third-party RAW camera apps, but found the process of moving files and changing numerous settings cumbersome. Chromagraph combines a camera and editor, with controls for exposure time, burst mode and color tuning.
The app also lets users import RAW photos and process them with Yedlin’s film-like image treatment. After importing, users can adjust tone, color, saturation and texture. The app’s interface is still in an early stage, but its image processing has drawn attention: Chromagraph spread widely on social media over the weekend, with early users comparing its results with the iPhone’s default camera output.
Yedlin previously developed color-grading tools intended to give Johnson’s films an organic, celluloid-like appearance. Those tools eventually enabled Johnson to apply the same color pipeline to still RAW images and film scans, prompting him to ask whether the approach could work for iPhone photography.
Sources: The Verge.