Apple purchased color grading tool Color.io in January

Apple purchased a small, individual company called Patchflyer in January, according to new acquisition information provided by the European Union. Patchflyer was owned by Jonathan Ochmann, who created Color.io, an online color grading tool popular with photographers and filmmakers.

Apple bought Color.io and employs Ochmann. Last year, Ochmann announced the impending closure of Color.io in November and said he was joining a company that would allow him to work on a scale he couldn’t achieve alone. “After over 10 years of handling everything alone, I have reached a point where I need to grow in ways that are not possible as a solo builder,” he wrote.

Color.io was known for its easy-to-use yet powerful tool for adding film-like color and texture to images. It used a custom color engine and custom color models, and had a rich library of tools for manipulating colors. Ochmann also designed the popular VisionColor LUTs before creating Color.io.

Color.io went offline on December 31, 2025, with approximately five weeks’ warning for the app’s more than 200,000 users. Now that Ochmann is employed at Apple, Color.io features could be integrated into Apple software in the future. Ochmann’s expertise and Color.io features would be useful for Final Cut Pro or Pixelmator Pro.

Apple also acquired PromptAI during the same period, according to the EU filing, but the purchase of PromptAI was already known. PromptAI was a startup focused on computer vision and had an application called Seemour. The app augmented home security cameras and detected people, pets, animals and other objects.