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P: Introducing the Project Indigo camera app

Forum|Forum|11 months ago
May 23, 2025
401 replies
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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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handbd_0423

Participant

@BorisTheBlade Will there be implementations of AI in the near future? Will be tuned to see it! 😄

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BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

@BorisTheBlade Will there be implementations of AI in the near future? Will be tuned to see it! 😄

By @handbd_0423

Can you explain what you mean by "implementations of AI"?

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handbd_0423

Participant

AI assisted denoise, AI assisted super-resolution, just your typical AI features that can scale up image quality

leed24280355

Participating Frequently

Congratulations on the latest update. I like the idea of saving images to a Project Indigo album.

Is it possible to have a setting for the filmstrip to only show images from the Project Indigo album?

Also, the previously mentioned issue with edits in LR 'losing' the Indigo profile still exists, but I guess that needs an update to LR itself.

Lee

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BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

Congratulations on the latest update. I like the idea of saving images to a Project Indigo album.

Is it possible to have a setting for the filmstrip to only show images from the Project Indigo album?

Also, the previously mentioned issue with edits in LR 'losing' the Indigo profile still exists, but I guess that needs an update to LR itself.

Lee

By @leed24280355

We've talked to Camera Raw and Lightroom teams on better Indigo profile support, and that is coming. I cannot comment on the exact timeline because, as you can imagine, those teams deal with a lot more than just our team. Regarding the album support, being able to save images in Project Indigo album is just step 1: we'll add more functionality around it in the future.

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nhan_8084

Known Participant

@BorisTheBlade How does stacking frames work once you entered night mode? For example, I am using https://testufo.com/frameskipping to test 1/2s single frame, and 1/30s 15 frames. The squares captured should be the same on both but it isn't. Is it stacking 15 frames at 1/30s per frame? Perhaps you can test this as well, handheld vs on a tripod, which was what I did and keep framing as identical as you can.

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BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

@BorisTheBlade How does stacking frames work once you entered night mode? For example, I am using https://testufo.com/frameskipping to test 1/2s single frame, and 1/30s 15 frames. The squares captured should be the same on both but it isn't. Is it stacking 15 frames at 1/30s per frame? Perhaps you can test this as well, handheld vs on a tripod, which was what I did and keep framing as identical as you can.

By @nhan_8084

In theory they should be the same, but in practice they won't be. This is, as many other things are, due to iPhone API limitations. In Night mode we run OIS (to enable longer exposure times without camera shake blur), which needs to be captured in brackets of up to 8 photos in a row. After a bracket is captured, there is a small delay (about 400ms I believe) before the next bracket can be captured. So you will likely see a gap in motion as you do that. This is easy to test with the Long Exposure feature and light trails. Not sure why this was Apple's design choice for the camera, but it is impossible to circumvent. We can either capture 1 frame in a bracket, so at least the gaps are uniform, but that would be super slow. Or we can capture without OIS, but then we couldn't use longer exposure times.

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nhan_8084

Known Participant

@BorisTheBlade Could you elaborate more on the brackets? Does it work like in my example as followed: Set to 1/30s 15 frames, but only 8 is allowed in one "bracket" whatever that is, then the next 7 will fill up the next bracket then merge during that 1/30s time? I believe apple does similar in stock camera app as you mentioned that they stacked for example in 30s, stacking 10 images at 3s intervals or something like that versus stacking at exactly 30s per frame. I believe in google camera, you're actually stacking at that set ss per frame.

How slow are we talking because if that is the case then perhaps that can be useful for something like Astro mode vs the typical handheld mode? I would never want to sacrifice OIS bc of blurryness even if Indigo discard blurry frames.

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NickL9783

Participant

Any chance to add a simple timelapse feature please? I would love to capture these lovely DNG files to a short 5-sec videos for my vlog shots. I mean, it's how crazy we can edit DNG files straight on iPhone through Lightroom Mobile, then export image sequences to video editor for RAW video on an iPhone nowadays.

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BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

Any chance to add a simple timelapse feature please? I would love to capture these lovely DNG files to a short 5-sec videos for my vlog shots. I mean, it's how crazy we can edit DNG files straight on iPhone through Lightroom Mobile, then export image sequences to video editor for RAW video on an iPhone nowadays.

By @NickL9783

Timelapse is on our backlog - it is not that difficult to do actually, but we are prioritizing other features which are more impactful immediately to a large number of customers: stability, performance, iPhone 17 and iOS 26 support, image quality, ... the list is long 🙂

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Man_Keyboard4263

Participant

After updating to version 1.0.3 today, when I tried to use 3X and 6X, dark gray circular stains appeared on the screen. I wiped the lens and tried again, but the problem still existed.

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BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

After updating to version 1.0.3 today, when I tried to use 3X and 6X, dark gray circular stains appeared on the screen. I wiped the lens and tried again, but the problem still existed.

By @Man_Keyboard4263

Interesting. It looks to me like a lens smudge because if you take the 3x image and crop the center, the smudge appears exactly where I'd expect it for the 6x image. If you run the native camera app and point at the same scene, do these issues disappear?

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Man_Keyboard4263

Participant

When I took the same photo at 3x and 6x with the native camera, the stain disappeared.

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georgeb73469922

Inspiring

Will there be a Project Indigo version for iPhone 17 Pro? I'm spoiled! Not eager to go back to working with RAW files...

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BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

Will there be a Project Indigo version for iPhone 17 Pro? I'm spoiled! Not eager to go back to working with RAW files...
By @georgeb73469922

We are working on a new release and hope to have it available in a week or two at most. Please stay tuned.

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handbd_0423

Participant

Suggestions for Adobe Indigo

AI-enhanced final rendering: sharpen details, refine textures, balance highlights/shadows
Depth maps for post-shot blur, refocusing, and selective edits
Exposure/focus bracketing with smart AI merges (HDR, stacking, macro, astro)
Computational video: HDR, low-light, stabilization, motion super-resolution
AI scene detection with customizable/personalized looks
Adaptive noise reduction that preserves detail where it matters
Panorama/stitching and better macro/telephoto handling
Flash/strobe sync options
Faster, more efficient AI processing with offline/privacy controls
Seamless cross-platform support and metadata export

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Moonboots22

Participating Frequently

Will co-sign on this list. Some really great feature recommendations here.

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BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

Project Indigo version 1.0.3 is now live in the App Store. It brings quite a few improvements, both visible as new features, and under the hood as stability and performance improvements. Please try it out and let us know your thoughts.

We also want to acknowledge that many of you have upgraded to iPhone 17-series and Indigo does not work for you yet. This is our highest priority and we are working hard to calibrate and test new devices as quickly as we can. Unfortunately, we did not get any advance prototypes to prepare for the transition, and unlike other 3rd party camera apps, we need more information from the hardware to properly function, which is why this takes a bit more time. We appreciate your patience.

Thank you all for your support!

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nhan_8084

Known Participant

@BorisTheBlade awesome for the release! I took a before vs after the update, and it seemed to me the jpeg processing has not been changed right? Just want confirmation since I couldn't see any improvements. Looks like this update prioritizes more on the stability (fixing overheats, and crashes), enabling separate DNG, selfie mirror and other improvements mentioned in the changelog right?

Would the next update to support iPhone 17 series also include the processing update improvements that we spoke about, ie.... high frequency objects such as foliages on trees/bushes, less denoise/sharpen ratios? Also could I make a suggestion to move the stacking of frames out of night mode and to normal photo mode but still reside in the pro mode areas where focus, iso, ss, and temp are located. The long exposure, I suggest to move it to the top area where the timer, histogram, etc. is located. I do realize that stacking does require more stability so you guys intended it for use on tripod mode , but since this mode is very often mingled or changed from the normal user point of views, hobbyist and semi-pro like myself would prefer handheld stacking. Also I think Indigo does have auto discard blurry frames prior to merging right, so that will fix the handheld issue.

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BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

Thanks - hope it is more stable now and driving devices less hot. There are no image processing updates in this release, and those will generally take longer to do: tuning the image quality for some set of images can often ruin another set of images.

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Jay Levine Media

Participating Frequently

I have been using PI on my iPhone 16 Pro Max. I upgraded to 17 Pro Max and it says not supported. Anyone have it working or will we need an update?

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BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

I have been using PI on my iPhone 16 Pro Max. I upgraded to 17 Pro Max and it says not supported. Anyone have it working or will we need an update?

By @Jay Levine Media

An update is required. It is in the works and we will release it as soon as it is ready.

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Moonboots22

Participating Frequently

Boris and team -

A few specific feature requests I'm following up on, seeing if you're willing to divulge their place in the upcoming release:

1. Continued performance optimization relative to overheating, battery (16 Pro)

2. A "portait mode" that mimics in app what LR Mobile can do with the AI Portrait Blur feature

3. Super-res on existing lenses (i.e. upscale the 1x from 12mp Bayer RAW to 24, or 36, or 48), and/or additional "virtual" lenses (like the 28mm equivalent 1.25x or 35mm equivalent 1.5x crop offered on Stock cam)

These three changes would probably make me go to Project Indigo for my full time camera app on a 16 Pro. Appreciate the team's work!

B

BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

Boris and team -

A few specific feature requests I'm following up on, seeing if you're willing to divulge their place in the upcoming release:

1. Continued performance optimization relative to overheating, battery (16 Pro)

2. A "portait mode" that mimics in app what LR Mobile can do with the AI Portrait Blur feature

3. Super-res on existing lenses (i.e. upscale the 1x from 12mp Bayer RAW to 24, or 36, or 48), and/or additional "virtual" lenses (like the 28mm equivalent 1.25x or 35mm equivalent 1.5x crop offered on Stock cam)

These three changes would probably make me go to Project Indigo for my full time camera app on a 16 Pro. Appreciate the team's work!

By @Moonboots22

Thank you for sharing your list. Of these three, I can confirm that #1 remains the biggest priority (1.0.3 should already show you improvements in the app, but more is coming). #2 is not trivial to do, especially not with image quality which would make our portrait mode 'stand out'. It's in R&D but I cannot share any timelines on this. Finally, #3 is something we are experimenting with and hope to bring out in some form relatively soon. We appreciate your patience, and are looking forward to hear your thoughts on the latest release.

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Moonboots22

Participating Frequently

Boris - So far, so good on the new update! I see that cropping in the Apple Photos app still causes the magenta color tint. As a workaround, would it be possible for the team to consider a simple cropping tool within the Project Indigo film strip? I'm looking for the ability to do basic cropping/framing without having to go into Lightroom Mobile, crop there, re-export as a JPEG, and delete the original. Thoughts?

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