Chromagraph Camera is exactly the camera app I’ve been looking for for the iPhone

Last week, film director Rian Johnson announced a surprising new iPhone camera app that reimagines what a smartphone photo should look like. Many people would agree that Apple iPhone photos are a little overworked.

The iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo introduced a new film texture option, but it’s a bit over the top in my opinion. Chromagraph Cameraon the other hand, it feels pretty perfect.

There have been attempts to improve iPhone photos over the years, but in my opinion they are all too difficult. Most iPhone camera apps require you to dial in settings. While this may be appropriate for certain settings, I want my iPhone to be a point-and-shoot experience only. If I wanted the perfect photo, I would use my camera.

This means iPhone photos don’t look great out of the box. It’s not a hardware limitation. If you take a RAW iPhone photo and edit it yourself, you can actually get surprisingly good results. Apple’s camera app just has bad default settings.

When Apple introduced the film grain feature on the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo, I was actually quite intrigued. It was definitely my favorite camera feature when I briefly tried the iPhone 18 Pro. However, for some reason, the cinematic look on the iPhone Duo is a bit over the top.

Apps like Adobe Project Indigo have come very close in terms of looks, but the fact that there’s so much time spent in post-processing means it’s often awkward. I’ve also had a few instances of losing photos because the app closed in the background while it was still processing the photo.

Chromagraph Camera looks good and works well

When Chromagraph Camera was announced, I was quite intrigued. I paid $12.99 and was happy with the results. I tweeted some of my sample photos when I just got the app and it was worth it.

$12.99 might be a steep starting price, but if you really want an iPhone camera app that just takes good-looking photos without a lot of hassle, this works really well.