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Chemical Wedding has released version 8.9.0 of Artemis Director’s Viewfinder, and it brings something no other viewfinder app has shipped so far: a dedicated Vertical Mode built around 9:16 framing rather than bolted onto a landscape interface. The update reconfigures the app’s lens, framing, and shot-planning tools for vertical composition, keeps Helios Live-View sun tracking available for exterior work, and syncs with the Mac desktop companion Artemis Studio. It went live on the App Store on August 14, 2026; it is free for existing users, and you can switch it on with a single toggle in Settings. Let’s take a closer look!
Artemis has been a fixture in pre-production since 2008, and the ecosystem has continued to expand, including Artemis Studio for Mac. But the basic job of the Director’s Viewfinder has not changed much: hold up a phone, dial in a camera and lens combination from the app’s database, and see the frame before the camera truck arrives. What has changed is the shape of the frame a growing number of productions need to see. Chemical Wedding’s argument with this release is that vertical work has moved out of the social media corner and into scripted drama, and that the people shooting it deserve the same tooling everyone else has had for nearly two decades.
Vertical Mode is activated in Settings, where users toggle between traditional and vertical shooting modes. Once enabled, the app’s tools are reconfigured for 9:16 framing rather than simply cropping a landscape view. Chemical Wedding describes it as “a dedicated mode for anyone shooting 9:16, with every tool in Artemis reconfigured for vertical framing,” and frames the distinction plainly on its update page: the mode is “built for 9:16 instead of adapted from it.”
The gallery has been redesigned alongside it. Captured stills and video clips now display in 9:16 in the app’s library, which sounds cosmetic until you have scrolled through a few hundred location frames on a phone and had every thumbnail letterboxed into the wrong orientation. For a scout who shoots dozens of setups a day, the review pass is where the time actually goes.
The camera and lens databases carry over. Artemis ships with a database of professional motion picture cameras and lenses, and supports user-created custom formats, so the vertical workflow still starts from a real sensor and a real focal length rather than a generic crop. Chemical Wedding’s own press image shows the interface running an ARRI Alexa 35 at 4.6K 16:9 with ASC Todd-AO Primes at 60mm, with scene and slugline metadata attached to the frame, which suggests the vertical frame is being derived within a conventional sensor format rather than requiring a separate vertical camera profile.
Chemical Wedding’s stated reasoning is market-driven. The company says vertical content “now accounts for a large share of all production, not a niche corner of it,” and the App Store release notes are blunter still: “With so much production in ‘vertical dramas’ worldwide we thought it high time to adapt Artemis into this new format.”
That is the manufacturer’s framing, and we haven’t independently verified the share of scripted output now shot vertically. What is not in dispute is that the vertical drama format, short-form serialized fiction shot natively for phone screens, has built out real production infrastructure over the past few years, with crews, schedules, and call sheets that look a lot like conventional episodic work. Those productions still need lens selection, framing decisions, and sun-position planning. Until now, they have been doing it with tools designed to think in landscape.
Chemical Wedding claims this makes Artemis the first director’s viewfinder app to offer a dedicated toolset for vertical formats. Competing apps have generally supported custom framelines in arbitrary aspect ratios, which gets you a vertical rectangle but not a vertical interface, so the claim is credible as stated, though it rests on where you draw the line between a supported aspect ratio and a dedicated mode.
The release integrates Helios Live-View, Chemical Wedding’s sun-tracking feature, into the vertical workflow. Helios Live-View overlays the sun’s path directly onto the live camera view, with a time slider and date navigation, so a scout can stand at a location and see where the light will be at a given hour on a given shooting day. It arrived in Artemis shortly before this update, and we covered its introduction alongside a comparable feature from Cadrage in our piece on director’s viewfinder apps converging on sun-position pre-vis.
For exterior vertical shoots, this matters more than it might seem. A 9:16 frame stacks a lot of sky above the subject and very little to either side, so the sun’s altitude drives the look far more than its azimuth does. Being able to check that in the actual delivery aspect ratio, on location, is the kind of small workflow saving that pre-vis tools live or die on.
Vertical Mode is also fully integrated with Artemis Studio, the macOS desktop planning application we looked at when it launched as Chemical Wedding’s desktop companion to the viewfinder app. Frames captured vertically on the phone land in the desktop planning environment, where shot lists and storyboards get assembled. Recent Artemis releases also added non-destructive layered editing for gallery images and cross-device layer synchronization, so overlays drawn on a vertical frame remain re-editable rather than baked in.
Vertical Mode is an iOS release. Version 8.9.0 requires iOS 18.0 or iPadOS 18.0 and runs on iPhone and iPad. The Android edition of Artemis on Google Play still lists version 3.0.6, last updated in February 2020, so Android users are not getting this update and have not been getting Artemis updates for some time. Chemical Wedding’s broader toolkit, which includes Artemis Studio for Mac, Artemis TV for tvOS, Artemis XR for visionOS, and the hybrid optical Artemis Prime, is similarly built around the Apple ecosystem.
If you are on Android and shooting vertical, the options are thinner. Magic Cinema ViewFinder remains a free cross-platform alternative, though without a dedicated vertical toolset.
Vertical Mode is available now as a free upgrade for all Artemis users. The app itself is a free download from the App Store, with functionality unlocked through in-app purchases. At the time of writing, the US App Store lists a monthly subscription at $3.99, an annual subscription at $16.99, a perpetual Core License at $29.99, the Helios View add-on at $9.99, and External Camera Mode at $19.99. Prices vary by storefront.
Chemical Wedding was founded by cinematographer Nic Sadler and is based in Los Angeles. The company won an Emmy in 2018 for its technology and received the BSC Bert Easey Award in 2024. Sadler said the addition of Vertical Mode reflects the company’s commitment to supporting filmmakers as production formats evolve. Full details are on the Chemical Wedding update page.
Are you shooting for vertical delivery? Would a dedicated 9:16 mode make a difference to your workflow? Let us know in the comments below!
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A camera was put in my hands at 16, and I’ve been taking photographs ever since. Before moving to Vienna, I worked as a photographer on film sets, telling stories as they unfolded behind the scenes. Since then, I’ve focused on immersive theater, both as a photographer and an actor. I am the photographer for the award-winning Nesterval ensemble, documenting the energy and atmosphere of their performances. I’m a teller of stories. Stories hold my interest. I’ll take on any project with a story to tell.