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P: Introducing the Project Indigo camera app

Forum|Forum|11 months ago
May 23, 2025
401 replies
242012 views

This post applies to the Project Indigo iOS camera app.

Adobe Labs is excited to share an early look at Project Indigo, an iPhone camera app we've started to develop, to get feedback from the photography community. The app offers full manual controls, a more natural ("SLR-like") look, and high image quality in both JPEG and raw formats. It also introduces some new photographic experiences not available in other camera apps. For more information on the underlying technology, please refer to this Project Indigo blog post.

Before you start with Project Indigo

We recommend using Project Indigo on iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max or newer devices.
(Also supported are 12 Pro/Pro Max, 13 Pro/Pro Max, and all 14-series devices.)

You should have at least 1GB of storage space left for the app, the downloadable AI Models inside the app, and for captured photos.

Download the app from the App Store.
Check out the Project Indigo FAQ, which is updated regularly with new explanations.

Recipes for success when using Project Indigo

To get the maximum out of your images captured with the app, follow these guidelines:

When reviewing the results, focus on Project Indigo's more natural look (in both SDR and HDR). If you haven’t done this before, try viewing the images on your laptop or desktop device, preferably on an HDR screen.

Capture with both JPEG and raw DNGs with file saving enabled. Project Indigo produces computational photography DNG files, which have the same natural look as JPEG images, but much more latitude for editing after capture.

Take control of the camera with the built-in Pro Controls, including controls that are exclusive to a computational camera: Frames to Merge and Merge Method. These may be intimidating for beginners, but with Project Indigo, you can try them for free, and nothing will break—you can always reset the settings to ‘Auto’ and let the camera take back control.

Go to the Indigo Labs page and play with the latest innovations our team can offer. These are only available on mobile via Indigo!

Be patient! Project Indigo is doing a lot of heavy lifting under the hood, and it will reward you with great photos. In return, it may ask you for a bit of time to set up captures when needed, and to wait a few seconds for the image processing to finish.

Sending feedback

Please try the app and share feedback in this community forum thread. If you report a problem you encountered, it would help to include details like which device you are running Project Indigo on, what kind of scene you were trying to capture, what you were trying to achieve with the camera, and as much information as possible about what you like or do not like about the resulting photo quality. Our team will continually monitor this thread to track issues and improve future experiences.

To improve the performance and results of Project Indigo, it is important that examples of images that do not meet your expectations are forwarded to the team via your report. A large variety of file formats are allowed as attachments in these forum posts. The best option is to attach your image's raw file directly to your feedback post. Note that there is a 50 MB limit on an attachment's file size. If your raw file is too large to attach, the best option is to share the file via a file-sharing service (Dropbox or similar) and then share the link in your feedback post. Thank you for continuing to provide feedback on the Project Indigo camera!

Boris Ajdin: Product Manager, NextCam

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????????_4983

Participating Frequently

@BorisTheBlade Can you make the night mode have more agressive predefined looks like gcam had with its night sight which looked really bright and vivid? I find indigo night mode to produce very clean results but as soon as there is very low light when i edit the raw in lightroom and bring up the shadows i loose color detail and sometimes it is noisier than expected. Also will there be improvements to the super res zoom algorithm soon meaning solving the misalignmnents when there are moving subjects or leaves or foliage and detail improvements in all corners of the image even if there is subject motion? Thank you!

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BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

@BorisTheBlade Can you make the night mode have more agressive predefined looks like gcam had with its night sight which looked really bright and vivid? I find indigo night mode to produce very clean results but as soon as there is very low light when i edit the raw in lightroom and bring up the shadows i loose color detail and sometimes it is noisier than expected. Also will there be improvements to the super res zoom algorithm soon meaning solving the misalignmnents when there are moving subjects or leaves or foliage and detail improvements in all corners of the image even if there is subject motion? Thank you!

By @????????_4983

Any updates to the look, including adding new looks, are time-involving - we definitely need to test on tons of images, and sometimes we need a lot of images while developing these new looks. We are indeed working on various look improvements, so please stay tuned. Super-resolution is a bit easier in that regard since there are fewer use-cases we need to test for, so we'll keep improving it over time.

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Incredible_Everglow8050

Participant

Also with the latest iOS version with my iPhone 14pro, I still cannot import all my dng files in Linux Darktable latest version. I can however after the 'conversion' via Adobe DNG converter.

karend8167956

Participant

Loving this app, it's so much better for sunrises than the native photo app. It's way better for workflow, and I really appreciate you guys adding the dedicated folder in photos. One feature I'm really missing, I could really use a level and grid lines so I can get my sunrise photos level to the horizon and centered!

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Moonboots22

Participating Frequently

This already exists! Up on the top bar next to where the DNG+JPEG menu is, swipe left on the histogram and it will bring up another taskbar that has timer, level, grid, overexposure warning (zebra stripes), and the settings menu.

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adi.kamath

Participant

Any updates on the 17 lineup Boris? Just checking. An ETA would be great! Waiting since I got the phone!!

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adi.kamath

Participant

@BorisTheBlade pretty please? 🙂

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georgeb73469922

Inspiring

I shot this with the 1X (24mm eq.) camera on the iPhone 16 Pro with Project Indigo. This is a deep crop of the image, straight out of the camera with no editing whatsoever. I've attached the file, in case you might want to examine it in PS/LR. Am I pleasantly anticipating Indigo for iPhone 17 Pro? Oh my - am I!

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PavelVishniakov

Participant

The last update 1.0.4) has broken the ability to launch Indigo from the lock screen. When I try to do it now, it gives me a black screen with no controls and the only way to fix it is to lock the phone, unlock it again and launch Indigo "normally".

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BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

The last update 1.0.4) has broken the ability to launch Indigo from the lock screen. When I try to do it now, it gives me a black screen with no controls and the only way to fix it is to lock the phone, unlock it again and launch Indigo "normally".

By @PavelVishniakov

Hi Pavel - sorry to hear that. We are unable to reproduce this though... can you share more information with us, such as which device and which OS version you are running? Thank you.

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PavelVishniakov

Participant

Hi Boris,

I'm running iOS 26.0.1 on iPhone 16 Pro. I've tried to retproduce this issue recently, but I couldn't reproduce it as well. Seems like it was either a very unique combination of factors or a random glitch.

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Moonboots22

Participating Frequently

Boris - you've mentioned in the past how the team has (rightly) turned its eyes to iOS26. Some of your posts and the app release notes have indicated that iOS26 has offered improved image quality, focus, etc.

As an iOS18 holdover for other reasons (stability, some of the Bluetooth/Apple Car Play issues in the release build), are you able to articulate exactly how (and maybe why) iOS26 on a singular device (iPhone 16 Pro in my case) would improve through a major software release like this? Is focus the main improvement, or are there other significant improvements along the image pipeline that affected what the Adobe team was able to do?

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andre_2260

Participating Frequently

of course I'm not Boris! but one thing mentioned by him were quality improvements around the pipeline and something with a lilac stitch if edited in apple photos. 🙂

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steves75674135

Known Participant

I am having problems trying to un follow all of the posts. I am going on vacation and I so not want to receive the emails.
HELP thx, Steeve

mopperle

Inspiring

Click on your Avatar in the upright corner, click on "Edit Community Profile", click on "Following", mark the content you do not want to follow longer and click on "unfollow".

S

steves75674135

Known Participant

worked, Thank you

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instanes1

Participant

Since the last update on my iPhone 15 Pro Max something has gone amiss. If shoot one photo, I then get a preview of that photo says "Preview only, tap here to develope" which I do and it devlopes, bu then I get another preview with the same message. I have tried this for six time and it just keeps repeating.....maybe there is a setting I missed????

B

BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

Since the last update on my iPhone 15 Pro Max something has gone amiss. If shoot one photo, I then get a preview of that photo says "Preview only, tap here to develope" which I do and it devlopes, bu then I get another preview with the same message. I have tried this for six time and it just keeps repeating.....maybe there is a setting I missed????

By @instanes1

If you capture a DNG-only photo, then Indigo does not spend compute cycles to generate it's signature image "look". Instead, we use Apple's built-in DNG viewer to generate the image rendering, and that viewer ignores some of the tags in the DNG so the final rendering quality is poor. When you develop the photo, we run our AI look, generate a JPEG, and save it as a new file in the Camera Roll. You should notice that a new file was added to the filmstrip in Indigo when the processing is done. We do not do any catalogging in the background to "connect" the DNG and the processed JPEG images together - they are separate assets in the Camera Roll and as far as Indigo is concerned. In the future we may change the processing we do for DNGs (for example, we may tune sharpening, or adjust the tone mapping) so when you re-develop the DNG later the JPEG you get should look different and you can compare the old and the new. We may add some tracking of these generated JPEGs in the future, though there is no commitment to do so. It is the user's resposibility to track these. Please reach out if you have more questions or need more guidance on best practices around this.

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yulong_3753

Participant

Your Project Indigo is excellent, but my phone is an iPhone13Pro max with iOS15.2. I really like the color tone of your product. Ever since I tried it on my friend's phone, I've been eager to use it on my device, but I don't want to upgrade my iPhone.

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andre_2260

Participating Frequently

As written several times before, it's unlikely that older systems will receive support. it's even possible that iOS 18 will be legacy soon because iOS 26 change quite a few things which increases the quality of processing. so thinking about stopping usage on 18 will make it extremely unlikely to support iOS 15.

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