Apple Has Acquired Popular Web-Based Color Grading Tool Color.io

It has been revealed in European regulatory documents that Apple acquired a one-person software company, Patchflyer GmbH, in January. Patchflyer, or rather its sole employee, Jonathan Ochmann, created the web-based color grading tool Color.io.

As Macrumors reports, Ochmann’s creation, Color.io, was a popular tool among both filmmakers and photographers. Related to Apple’s purchase of the company, Ochmann announced in November that his website would go dark on December 31, 2025, Phrasemaker reported last year.

At the time, Ochmann said that the impending closure was not due to any financial problems or a lack of interest on his part, characterizing the move as part of him joining a then-unnamed company that had “shaped and inspired me.”

Ochmann added that the move would empower him to work at a much larger scale and create tools he could never have done on his own. He singlehandedly built and maintained color.io for a decade.

As Phrasemaker explains, color.io earned a strong reputation and “more than 200,000 users” thanks to its analog-inspired color science, volumetric film grain engine, log-encoded web-based color space, approachable user interface, effect emulations like halation and bloom, exporting tools, and 3D LUT creation functionality.

Now all of that technology Ochmann built is part of Apple, as is Ochmann himself. It is reasonable to expect that, at some point down the road, at least some of the tools Ochmann built at color.io will be integrated into Apple’s own creative software, including, most likely, Final Cut Pro. However, many photographers found color.io’s tools intuitive and powerful for photo editing as well, so it would not be shocking to see integration in Photos or Pixelmator Pro, another of Apple’s recent major creative software acquisitions.

As the European regulatory documents illustrate, Apple is no stranger to acquisitions. The Cupertino-based tech giant acquired 11 companies in 2025 and so far this year, and there’s little doubt that negotiations for other purchases are in the works.

Apple also occasionally pulls talent from software companies rather than outright buying the company itself, as it did recently with the hiring of Lux Optics co-founder Sebastiaan de With, one of the key minds behind the extremely popular iPhone photo and video editing apps Halide and Kino. Lux Optics’ other co-founder, Ben Sandofksy, is reportedly suing de With for alleged financial improprieties and taking Lux’s source code to Apple.

Image credits: Color.io, now part of Apple