Rian Johnson's iPhone Camera App Goes Viral

Filmmaker Rian Johnson, best known for writing and directing "Knives Out," "Glass Onion," and "Star Wars: The Last Jedi," has seen his new iPhone photography app Chromagraph Camera climb to the top of the paid App Store charts after attracting attention on social media this week.

Johnson developed the app with his longtime cinematographer Steve Yedlin and programmer Eric Cameron, bringing image processing techniques from their films to iPhone still photography. Chromagraph currently ranks No. 1 in Photo & Video on the U.S. App Store.

Johnson's announcement on X accumulated six million views within a day, while users have been sharing their results, with some photo posts attracting thousands of likes.

Chromagraph shoots RAW photos and processes them using techniques Yedlin developed for his films, giving pictures a distinctive treatment of color, contrast, and grain. It also adds halation, a soft glow around bright areas. Users can adjust the look with controls for color, tone, and texture.

The effect appears after taking a photo, when users open the app's gallery. Original RAW files are kept intact, so edits can be changed later.

For sharing, photographs can be exported as JPEG or HEIC files with the processing applied. An automatic export option also sends each finished photo to the user's photo library.

Chromagraph Camera costs $12.99 as a one-time purchase on the App Store and requires iOS 17 or later.