Comparison

Spotmatic Magic vs Chromaform

Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.

Head to head
About

Spotmatic Magic

This app offers a comprehensive suite of computational photography tools for mobile and desktop. It allows for real-time image adjustments, creative filter application, and advanced stacking techniques like HDR and astrophotography. Supports RAW import from various cameras and export to multiple formats.

Highlights
  • Real-time image adjustments with live histogram
  • Creative filter suite including painterly and film emulation
  • Advanced stacking: Focus, HDR, Astrophotography
  • Motion removal and long exposure simulation
  • RAW import from major camera manufacturers
  • Export to HEIF, JPEG, PNG, 16-bit TIFF
Features
Read full description

SpotmaticMagic is a complete computational photography studio for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Three tools in one place — Adjust tone and color with a live preview, apply a creative Filter like Watercolor or a classic film stock, or Transform a whole sequence with desktop-class algorithms like Focus Stacking, HDR Fusion, and Astrophotography Stacking. Adjust in Real Time Fine-tune every image on a live canvas with an on-screen luminance histogram. Drag Exposure, Highlights, Shadows, Contrast, Black & White Point, Brilliance, Saturation, Vibrance, Warmth, and Tint — plus a true vignette. Every slider starts on a smart Auto value that solves the whole adjustment chain at once — in true photographic stops — correcting color casts without blowing out highlights; take manual control whenever you like, or tap Reset All to return to Auto. On RAW files, Adjust also drives the decoder’s own Sharpness and Noise Reduction. Nothing is written until you apply. A Creative Filter Suite Transform a single photo with ten hand-built looks: • Painterly — Watercolor (soft bleeds, pooled pigment, and granulation on both the Quick and Verisimilitude presets), Oil Painting (thick impasto relief), Ink Painting (sumi-e ink wash), Painterly Media (pastel, gouache, and acrylic), and Impressionist brushwork. • Graphic — Cartoon, Line Drawing (pen, pencil, and charcoal), and Photo Abstraction. • Selective Focus — color splash, background blur, and spotlight effects driven by automatic subject detection. • Film — authentic color and black-and-white film-stock emulation, including Kodak Portra, Ektar, and Kodachrome; Fujifilm Velvia, Provia, and Astia; and Ilford and Fujifilm B&W stocks like Tri-X, HP5 Plus, T-Max, Delta, and Neopan Acros — each with real grain, sharpness, and halation. Every painterly look is built on a real simulation, not a preset stack — watercolor runs an actual shallow-water fluid solver, and paper and pigment are sampled and composited in physically meaningful units. Pro Stacking & Transform Combine an image sequence with hardware-accelerated algorithms: • Focus Stacking — merge images shot at different focus distances into a single edge-to-edge sharp photo, with optional per-pixel optical-flow refinement. • HDR Fusion (Natural & Vibrant) — blend exposure brackets for the full dynamic range of a scene, in realistic or punchy styles. • Astrophotography Stacking — reduce noise and reveal deep-sky detail, with full bias, dark, flat, and dark-flat calibration support and star alignment that fits even thin-overlap frames. • Motion Removal — erase passing tourists or cars from a burst of otherwise identical frames. • Long Exposure & Motion Blur — simulate silky water and light trails without an ND filter. • Image Alignment — scale-robust feature-based alignment built for handheld and macro sequences. Any Camera, Any Format Import from your Photo Library, or choose individual files or a whole folder. SpotmaticMagic reads full-resolution RAW from every major manufacturer — Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Olympus / OM System, Panasonic, and more, plus universal DNG — decoded on Apple’s latest RAW engine. Export as HEIF, JPEG, PNG, or 16-bit TIFF in wide-gamut Display P3, at the quality and resolution you choose, with your original EXIF, GPS, and IPTC metadata preserved. Inspect Every Detail Tap any result to open a fullscreen Zoom Inspector. Pan and zoom with a navigator minimap, and press and hold to compare your edit against the original. Who It’s For For macro and landscape shooters, astrophotographers, and any creative who wants real control over how their photos look — from a quick live adjustment to a painterly filter to a precision focus stack. The perfect companion for a dedicated camera, and a powerful way to elevate the photos you already have.

About

Chromaform

Features
Read full description

Chromaform is a professional-grade RAW photo editor for photographers who demand precision, speed, and total creative control — with a full suite of on-device AI tools that never send your photos to the cloud. REAL-TIME RAW EDITING Open DNG, CR3, NEF, ARW, and other major camera RAW formats with true RAW processing. Exposure and recovery work directly from sensor data — no clipping, no compromise. Every adjustment renders live on the GPU through a Vulkan pipeline (vkdt + MoltenVK) and Metal-accelerated Core Image. COMPLETE ADJUSTMENT TOOLKIT • Light: Exposure, Contrast, Highlights, Shadows + an interactive per-channel Tone Curve • Color: Temperature, Tint, Vibrance, Saturation • Effects: Texture, Clarity, Dehaze, Vignette • Detail: Sharpening, Noise Reduction, and Neural Denoise • Optics: Chromatic Aberration removal Fine-tune any slider with +/− buttons and reset any section with one tap. COLOR GRADING Cinema-style color wheels for shadows, midtones, and highlights. Grade the whole frame, or apply grades selectively to the foreground, background, or a gradient region. ON-DEVICE AI TOOLKIT • Generative Erase — remove unwanted objects and let the model paint in a clean background • Smart Masking — tap any subject to select it with Segment Anything Model 2.1, then adjust just that region • Recolor Clothing — automatically detect garments and recolor them to any hue • Relight — add up to five virtual lights and drag them across the scene to reshape the lighting • Portrait — face-aware adjustments • Match — transfer the look of any reference photo with neural analysis • Auto Adjust — one tap analyzes the scene with Apple's Vision framework (classification, face detection, saliency) for optimal exposure, white balance, and color MASKING & GRADIENTS Combine subject masks with linear, radial, and rectangular gradient masks. Paint masks in or out by hand, feather the edges, and apply any adjustment or color grade to the masked area only. PRESETS & LUTS Nine built-in looks: Natural, Vivid, Film Warm, Film Cool, Cinematic, B&W Classic, B&W High Contrast, Vintage Fade, and Matte. Import your own .cube 3D LUTs for custom film emulations. CREATIVE EFFECTS Add atmosphere with the Water tool — rain drops and streaks. PIPELINE CONTROL See every stage of the processing pipeline and toggle any phase on or off to understand exactly how your edit is built. CLIPPING VISUALIZATION Toggle the Clip overlay to see blown highlights (red) and crushed shadows (blue) — essential for exposure-critical work. NON-DESTRUCTIVE WORKFLOW Your originals are never modified. Edits are stored as lightweight recipes — reopen any image with your edits intact, or reset to original at any time. PROJECT-BASED ORGANIZATION Group photos into projects, rate with stars, filter by rating, and copy, paste, or batch-apply edit recipes across an entire shoot. Review full-screen in the loupe with pinch-to-zoom. PRIVATE BY DESIGN The entire pipeline runs on-device with MoltenVK and Metal. Your photos never leave your device. Privacy Policy: https://chromaform.art/privacy Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/

Screenshots

Spotmatic Magic4 screens
Chromaform2 screens

Verdict

The call

The clearest difference is price: Chromaform at Free against Spotmatic Magic's $34.99. Chromaform also leads on update cadence (every 9 days vs every 5 weeks). Spotmatic Magic's advantage is in-app purchases (none vs 3). On ads, device support and iOS requirement there is nothing between them.

Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS

CostPrice · In-app purchases · Ads · Monetization

Chromaform is free to download; Spotmatic Magic costs $34.99 up front. Chromaform sells 3 in-app purchases, starting at $2.99 per month. Spotmatic Magic asks for nothing beyond the download.

UpkeepUpdate frequency

Spotmatic Magic ships an update every 5 weeks, Chromaform every 9 days. The most recent releases landed on October 10, 2026 and October 18, 2026 respectively.

Scorecard3 real differences · 6 level
Spotmatic Magic versus Chromaform: the parameters behind the verdict, then further details
ParameterSpotmatic MagicChromaform
Price$34.99Free — better
Rating5.0 (1 ratings) — better—
Number of ratings1 — better—
Update frequencyEvery 5 weeksEvery 9 days — better
AdsNoNo
In-app purchasesNo — betterYes
MonetizationPaid—
DevicesiPhone, iPad, Mac — betteriPhone, iPad
Requires iOS17.016.0 — better
Further details — not scored
Size11 MB35 MB
Age rating4+4+
DeveloperErich ChampionChromaform, Inc.

In-app purchases

None

Spotmatic Magic

No in-app purchases

3 purchases

Chromaform

Subscriptions2
  • Chromaform Pro$2.991 Month
  • Chromaform Pro$14.991 Year
One-time1
  • Chromaform Pro Lifetime$59.99

Questions

Is Spotmatic Magic free?
Spotmatic Magic costs $34.99, with no in-app purchases.
Is Chromaform free?
Chromaform is free to download, with in-app purchases available.
Do Spotmatic Magic or Chromaform have ads?
Neither Spotmatic Magic nor Chromaform shows ads.
Which is updated more often, Spotmatic Magic or Chromaform?
Spotmatic Magic ships an update every 5 weeks, and Chromaform every 9 days. Most recently, Spotmatic Magic was updated on October 10, 2026 and Chromaform on October 18, 2026.

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