{"id":951997,"date":"2026-11-04T06:42:21","date_gmt":"2026-11-04T06:42:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/951997\/"},"modified":"2026-11-04T06:42:21","modified_gmt":"2026-11-04T06:42:21","slug":"the-mad-color-science-behind-rian-johnsons-new-camera-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/951997\/","title":{"rendered":"The Mad Color Science Behind Rian Johnson’s New Camera App"},"content":{"rendered":"

You shouldn\u2019t ever take a photo of your midterm election ballot \u2014 it\u2019s illegal in some states \u2014 but, thanks to Rian Johnson<\/a> and his longtime DP Steve Yedlin<\/a>, there is now a very cinematic way to take iPhone photos of everything else.<\/p>\n

Yedlin has spent more than 20 years as a cinematographer, collaborating closely with Johnson on everything from \u201cBrick\u201d and \u201cThe Brothers Bloom\u201d to \u201cThe Last Jedi<\/a>\u201d and the \u201cKnives Out<\/a>\u201d films. But Yedlin has also spent 20 years delving into the science<\/a> of color and how filmmakers can better craft imagery through the technical tools available. And now he and his friends are in the business of making new ones.<\/p>\n

\"'The<\/a> \"ebenezer<\/a> <\/p>\n

Yedlin, Johnson, and color science coder Eric Cameron have been in the process of creating new software for light controls to replace traditional dimmer boards, pixel mapping, and on-screen playback (ie., when actors are looking at phone or computer screens on camera) with something that embraces the world of color-tunable lights and LEDs. But as a side project, they\u2019ve also just launched Chromagraph, an iPhone app that uses Yedlin\u2019s deep, mathematical understanding of color to bypass the iPhone\u2019s default photo processing settings for a more filmic look.<\/p>\n

The app project started because Johnson wanted something on his phone that could capture photos the way that Yedlin captures film<\/a> \u2014 using RAW images (ie., everything the sensor captures, not just what\u2019s rendered on a screen) and bypassing the standard iPhone image processing protocols.<\/p>\n

Surprisingly, it only took ten weeks to build, test, and refine the app Johnson wanted to a place the team was happy with it \u2014 although Yedlin admittedly told IndieWire the process to create Chromagraph was still pretty intense. The cinematographer had done the math to build an image processing look that works for cinema cameras like the Arri ALEXA, but even the newer, pro-level iPhone cameras have sensors so small they\u2019re smol, and they also spread image information out in a different way from how film cameras work.<\/p>\n

\"WakeBehind the scenes of \u2018Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery\u2019 John Wilson\/Netflix<\/p>\n

\u201c\u200aThe code values themselves, like the actual numbers in the pixels, alone don\u2019t tell you how bright something\u2019s supposed to be. It\u2019s the code values in the pixels plus this [metadata] evaluation,\u201d Yedlin said of iPhone cameras, before worrying he was being way too technical for a 900-word article. \u201cIt\u2019s not like we\u2019re putting different parameters into existing processing math. It\u2019s totally different math for the most part.\u201d<\/p>\n

To make a complicated story shorter, then, Yedlin and Cameron couldn\u2019t reprogram the iPhone camera, but they could get it to behave differently in order to bring RAW images (everything the camera sensor captures) into Chromagraph and then do a bunch of different and complicated math to achieve the image processing for the cinematic look that Rian Johnson<\/a> wanted to be able to pull up at the swipe of a screen.<\/p>\n

The main thing that was important to the team to get right and reflect real color science, as opposed to \u201cbullshit cinema color science,\u201d according to Yedlin, was to work from the truth that images that look aesthetically pleasing are not clinical or technical reproductions. They are not photometrically or colorimetrically \u201ccorrect.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat makes a good image is something that looks enough like what it\u2019s representing to be recognizable and then to be beautiful,\u201d Yedlin said. \u201cEven when you have a very clinical-looking, like a broadcast look as opposed to a cinema look, it\u2019s also not photometrically or colorimetrically correct. They\u2019re just not correct in a different way, you know? It\u2019s always a matter of taste.\u201d<\/p>\n

A lot of the very complicated math that went into how Chromagraph does image processing is based on Yedlin and Johnson\u2019s taste for how to make an image look artful, but then the app has contrast and saturation tools for individual photographers to take the look of their work even further. The tools inside of Chromagraph are, in fact, meant to be exactly like the math of white balance in ISO on a film camera.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt sort of gets repeated as giving photos the \u2018Knives Out\u2019 look, and that\u2019s fine if people want to say that, but I don\u2019t think of it that way. I think of it as generally artful rendering. Every single movie made with traditional film stocks was made with one of like three negatives and one of two print stocks, and they all have completely different looks based on the craftsmanship and the photography and what\u2019s being photographed and lighting and everything,\u201d Yedlin said. \u201cThis is just the image processing, so it\u2019s one look for that part, but the image processing part isn\u2019t the only thing that makes a photo.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where Chromagraph can really help photographers make their own photos, though, is in capturing color in a way that the iPhone default method can\u2019t quite reach. \u201cVibrant colors is a place where I think Chromagraph really shows off. A lot of times, with garish colors, you can have that saturation clamped look where one of the three channels is slammed so the entire area kinda looks like it\u2019s been just colored in like a coloring book,\u201d Yedlin said. \u201cSo some people are posting photos [from the app] where the colors really stand out, but then somebody else is posting photos with the most subtle, nuanced colors. It\u2019s only one look, but it\u2019s for that last little bit of finesse for whatever kind of photo you take.\u201d<\/p>\n

For that reason, Yedlin, Johnson, and Cameron don\u2019t necessarily want to support multiple looks inside of Chromagraph. They\u2019re also not planning on building an Android version anytime soon, and while they\u2019d like to support video, that\u2019s still a long way from being worked out. But for photographers with an iPhone in their pocket, the app is a fun, easy shortcut past importing photos into professional post tools.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s satisfying that every snapshot looks the way that we like it,\u201d Yedlin said.<\/p>\n

Chromagraph<\/a> is now available in the Apple App Store.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"You shouldn\u2019t ever take a photo of your midterm election ballot \u2014 it\u2019s illegal in some states \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":951998,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[449,458,459,64,63,460,134,1689,5296,172498,518778,31405],"class_list":["post-951997","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-film","tag-interviews","tag-rian-johnson","tag-steve-yedlin","tag-top-of-the-line"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951997","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=951997"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/951997\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/951998"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=951997"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=951997"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=951997"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}