P: Introducing the Project Indigo camera app

Known Participant

There’s quite a significant vignetting issue, underexposre, and heavy saturation on my 17 pro max on pretty much all rear lenses, especially the main and tele. This issue is not present in the dng of Indigo, especially if you import to lrm and hit reset to all!

Does the team not see ANY of these issues during the 4 months duration since the last update? I am having a hard time believing they didn’t and releasing it as an unfinished update?

Adobe Employee

Thank you, as always, for detailed tests and for helping us find ways to improve Indigo. The team really appreciates the amount of effort you are putting into these evals.

It will take a while to go through all the images and feedback you’ve shared and figure out what you are pointing at. From a quick reading it sounds to me like the complaints you are sharing are roughly to be filled into the following buckets:

BurstSR issues (mushy details at 2x or 8x zoom for things like foliage or moving subjects).
Overly aggressive denoising of the JPEG.
Underexposure and oversaturation of scenes, especially compared to the native camera app (which goes away in LrM when doing ‘Reset to All’)
Vignetting issues.

For #1, correct, BurstSR has not been updated. That has been shared on the forum before, and we would mention it in the release notes if we had updated it.

For #2, denoising was toned down - now JPEGs from Indigo will generally be less denoised than they were before.

For #3, this is a mix of a few things. Without going into too much detail, the lower exposure is often caused by presence of very bright areas in the photo. Since you prefer the version of Indigo photos when you Reset All in LrM, that means you are not happy with the Indigo profile we use. In LrM you can change the profile and let us know which of them makes the image look the best. Needless to say, updating the AI Look which generates the profile is not an easy task. We are working on it though.

For #4, we have also tuned vignetting correction and made it stronger, so compared to the previous app release there should be fewer issues with vignetting.

As always, when sharing test results with us, it is always helpful to label each image you share with more information about how it was captured. We do store all capture metadata in the JPEG and the DNG, but those sometimes get stripped when sharing from the device, or when uploading to other sites. We’ll see which of the files you shared have any useful metadata for us and which don’t.

Ultimately, there are objective image quality issues (like the BurstSR artifacts), and then there are more subjective image quality issues (like the targets for exposure and saturation). In both of those we aim to keep improving, and progress will not be continuous due to the nature of our camera system: a lot of things are powered by AI and tuning it is not only changing a few (or even a lot) of parameters. Stay tuned!

Known Participant

@BorisTheBlade I don’t mind sending raw but the forum won’t let me upload anything over 5mb again! I mentioned few post back for you to reach out to adobe forum team to not have any limits please on ANY file types that way it is much easier for me to share!

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/zyzpth3ccveoetuoeiz7s/IMG_4210.dng?rlkey=tgw30xtik85mgmk56cqkqecfr&st=zvfppdq3&dl=0

Known Participant

Here’s a scene involving human subject. He’s not in motion much so you won’t see any sort of strange artifacts, and it’s shot at the optical focal length. Every shot sent is auto, no taps as before. For the main lens sample, it seems like auto focus on stock and Indigo missed the man, but instead probably focused on the counter top where the butter is.

Indigo’s shot is way way over saturated, and under exposed unlike stock which is dead on in terms of saturations and expo. The only real difference noticed is that Indigo is soft, not over sharpened like stock. There’s no better details, hairs, clothing textures, even in the tele samples, there are no improvement in the jpeg.

I also attached raw and processed those raws to jpeg via Raw Power app and applied same treatment to both, which is nuking sharpening and noise reduction. Nothing else is touched.

Stock ProRaw: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hvgmdmsysw3porxu5p4qv/IMG_4209.dng?rlkey=ackmc8wn6dah6zbrdj8754ncu&st=5hqgq18k&dl=0

Indigo Raws: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/9k655sbhs7gtyrgfwvqi6/IMG_4217.dng?rlkey=rscill4e2n7fxt879t1jypmg2&st=rrbbdcoq&dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/yre8vrv74qsd2ulp3qrk4/IMG_4218.dng?rlkey=xqvbtk9ak6bhvkh2uhfnzvo3y&st=bfgl1btn&dl=0

Post Processed in Raw Power:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hsmwp9ml8ca7evjm9de1t/IMG_4209-1.jpeg?rlkey=hvsv60jcz41qgtbr6mmul07ts&st=m11cy5n6&dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/7i8ayrhlrh65vz5xkkf9c/IMG_4210-1.jpeg?rlkey=xdjmqelyuwt7d7iqxj0ptfmyo&st=vcbmcthd&dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/pao54v7d55471waau9560/IDG_20260410_121903_860-1.jpeg?rlkey=150z5i5hkredneu4pjpclhrid&st=6ltdu7r2&dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/45s181lhm9lpkonlmdi1v/IDG_20260410_121909_624-1.jpeg?rlkey=8m1mbclemjksyx19sakhgr710&st=042d58lk&dl=0

stock main: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/raytm661sruns1b2skczb/IMG_4201.jpeg?rlkey=pkillct5tfx1qikwujiim4loe&st=am3ujsim&dl=0

Known Participant

I found that indoor pictures are SIGNIFICANTLY underexposed vs true to life exposure, which stock does quite well in replicating. Also pay attention to the words, in stock it’s much more readable than Indigo’s rendering.

Also can the adobe web team allow more than 5mb file in jpeg and png please? It’s getting annoying to have to host to dropbox.

Known Participant

In the changelog it said updated denoise correction but I def do not see it being less! Also maybe a UI bug but there’s no 35mm focal length, it is 24 and 48, and if you pinch to zoom from 24, it goes 34, and 36 mm, up by two it seems!

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/4agwgy9mf4pwk5po0bgu8/IMG_4155.png?rlkey=giacgejpjv9bygnrc69ixr40m&st=tjkn5a49&dl=0

Known Participant

@BorisTheBlade seems like SR still have artifacts as before, 2x and 8x. I have attached the 8x, using my tv scenes as source of motion. You can see that any movement in subject, ever so slightly artifacts appears as mentioned before. If subject is still then artifacts are much less.

I also attached a crop showing indoor artifacts on movement.

static shot 8x picture frame vs stock vs my version of dng post via lrm with sharpening and denoising killed. As you can see as mentioned, the raw itself is quite good without the added AI components!

Known Participant

This is the 8x post via lrm

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/r0hq3lk4kb6kp3i76hdak/IDG_20260409_202657_627.jpeg?rlkey=c7u4uryymqi7bmf4m6q1sd9bn&st=nfkydvuu&dl=0

Known Participant

Ok After testing a phlethor of samples, it seems like image processing has not been touched yet really right @BorisTheBlade ? It all looks very very same as the previous release 4 months back!

Foliages still looks very mushy, and clumpy. Please see attached. Leaves and pine needles should NOT be this mushy, oily as I have mentioned previously.

I also attached sample of human faces, with as is jpeg vs how it should be as I showed before with sharpening killed, and denoising killed. As you see there are still plenty of textures to noise ratio in my screenshot for the processed raws.

I cannot upload some pics as it’s too big so I upload via dropbox. Note, stock jpeg also attached to show that there’s really no major difference aside from being less sharp than stock, the foliage rendering is still clump, and mushy. Also the tele at night shown is horrible as before!

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6sklik4c0aqnvd3oxqka7/IMG_4131.png?rlkey=d577wsllmj8wusjc85w3uxg6a&st=pybtp7dr&dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/oewtke9fokc588ywr624x/IMG_4132.png?rlkey=l5kdgmsiir6kuaj4z25whmq5g&st=i78b7xpc&dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/sd6kgab8tkaujqdgif7lp/IMG_4123.jpeg?rlkey=oyfuae2mehqeo5f6mbynqhwv1&st=ozwqvpip&dl=0

Known Participant

Initial impression: seems like nothing changed on my 17 pro max! High frequency foliages still is clumpy, and the infamous couch pillow I showed still have no texture at all. See attached. 059 and 596 is before update, the others are after. @BorisTheBlade

Known Participant

Here are the raws in LRM with reset to all, sharp and noise reduction killed, and highlights to -36. It was applied same to both before and after update. 059 is before, 239 is after update.

P

powerful_Elixir5E29

Participating Frequently

@BorisTheBlade whats the team take on this? Can indigo multi frame sr ever match the 2x zoom of say the iphone 15 with its quad bayer sensor? Is the iphone 15 2x zoom actually by reading all of its center 12mp crop pixels and is that even possible given it is a quad bayer sensor and is that possible from a single frame? Do these iphones really read all of its pixels at the same time meaning they produce their 48mp proraw by multiple 48mp frames and even a single one of those 48mp frames actually contains 48mp equaivalent luminance detail or the 48mp proraw is actually similar to indigo sr and is actually a multi frame reconstruction and the sensor cant actually capture a 48mp detail in moving subjects?

Adobe Employee

Everyone, Indigo 1.0.11 is finally out - apologies for a long delay. Going forward, we will aim to release more frequently (between 2-4 weeks), but targeting smaller improvements instead of making big releases. Exciting times ahead! Thanks to everyone for continuing to support our efforts.

Please find the release notes below.

Indigo team

New features:
- New grid view in the filmstrip. Find your photos more easily. Includes multi-selection for sharing or deletion.
- Use the multi-selection feature in the grid view to import multiple photos into the Lightroom mobile app in one go.
- Filtering of photos in the filmstrip and grid. Select between All Photos, Indigo Album, and Favorites.
- New option to display the 35mm equivalent focal length for rear cameras. Enable in Capture settings.
- Support added for iPhone 17e devices.

Initial iPad support
- Indigo now runs on iPads with at least 6GB of RAM. Note: Project Indigo is not yet tuned for iPad operation. For optimal experience use Project Indigo on an eligible iPhone device.

Bug fixes and improvements:
- Improved overall app stability with a completely reimplemented camera session. You should experience fewer crashes, delays, or hiccups.
- Updated noise and vignetting correction tuning for iPhone 17-series devices.
- Fixed an issue with black Indigo DNG thumbnails when viewed on a Mac.
- Capped exposure time during viewfinding in Night mode for a more responsive viewfinder experience.
- Fixed an issue where overexposed viewfinder was appearing on resuming the app if the app was backgrounded in Night mode with long exposure times.
- Tuned tap-to-focus behavior should help improve focus quality when tapping on small objects when the camera is zoomed in.
- Fixed a bug with vignetting correction for images utilizing the multi-image super-resolution.
- Intra-frame gaps for the Long Exposure feature are now consistent, allowing for better capture of things like light trails.
- Viewfinder video stream is now running at 4K (up from 2K) for a better preview experience when using pinch-to-zoom. It also improves focus loupe sharpness.
- Fixed an occasional bug where capturing photos in rapid succession resulted in two of the photos being identical.
- Fixed a temporary app freeze which may happen occasionally.
- Optimized Auto Exposure computation speed

Known issues:
- In Night mode, when switching quickly from very dark to very bright scenes, the app may get stuck with an overexposed viewfinder for some time. It will converge after a few seconds.

P

powerful_Elixir5E29

Participating Frequently

@BorisTheBlade in this update are there any improvements to the image quality for all devices?

Adobe Employee

Not explicitly. BurstSR is a challenging one to update on a short notice - the team is aware of its shortcomings and will be working on this going forward. As far as tuning other image processing, we may do more tuning depending on what kind of feedback we get from our 17-series users: if most users are happy, then it makes sense for us to tackle more devices.

M

Marten5E12

Participant

When I import my images from Indigo to Lightroom I sometimes only get a low res dng-file (aprox 1200x1600px). I have provided a link to an example here. Could be the app is having trouble merging frames because of the moving bus? Thing is that in Indigo I see a full res image. I suppose this is the jpg although the jpg is nowhere to be found in Lightroom. Please help. Do I need to swap some setting or change the workflow or is this a bug?Yellow bus and flowers