P: Introducing the Project Indigo camera app

Forum|Forum|1 year ago
May 23, 2025
406 replies
243987 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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jimf16377877

Known Participant

Would it be possible to make the file names generated for the images in some way sequential, as they are in a "regular" camera? I know the date is in the metadata, and so they can be sorted by date, but that info isn't always readily displayed (such as in columns of Finder on Mac). The seemingly random letters that change with each image just look confusing, and having Bridge rename them adds an extra step to workflow. Thanks for your work on this app!

B

BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

Hello Jim - how are you transferring the images to your computer, and which OS are you using? We know that Windows does this, since it uses PTP/MTP for image transfer, and those protocols are limited to 8 characters for file name + 3 for the extension. If you are encountering this on the Mac, we'd like the know your workflow so we can see if there is a way to address this. Thank you for helping us improve Project Indigo.

Would it be possible to make the file names generated for the images in some way sequential, as they are in a "regular" camera? I know the date is in the metadata, and so they can be sorted by date, but that info isn't always readily displayed (such as in columns of Finder on Mac). The seemingly random letters that change with each image just look confusing, and having Bridge rename them adds an extra step to workflow. Thanks for your work on this app!

By @jimf16377877

jimf16377877

Known Participant

Hi Boris - I'm on a mac running OS 15.6 with Bridge 2025 (15.1.0.635) My iphone is a 16 pro. I use 'Import from Device' to connect to my phone and the file names appear in that window and then transfer to the computer with the images. The DNG and the JPG of the same image have different names, all 8 charachters. I get names like TXV15599.DNG and LHN18622.JPG - both the same image, then the next image pair in the sequence (captured just minutes later) is LHAV0676.DNG and DOFG1522.JPG - again versions of the same image. So, there's two images with four different unrelated file names.

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nhan_8084

Known Participant

@BorisTheBlade I forgot if the question was answered or brought up, when I took 10x SR of Indigo, it doesn't look like a 10x shot vs the native stock app. It looks like a 8x or so zoom. The native 10x is a true 10x, albeit it being much much worse than Indigo's. Is it possible for the focal lengths to match that of the native's?

N

nhan_8084

Known Participant

@BorisTheBlade Could you answer this question of mine? I wasn't sure if you saw it. Thanks!

M

michaelb79622326

Participant

It's really magic. Like my old Pixel 4a. Today I stopped in the Forrest where I made some nice pictures years ago with my old Pixel. Now I watched at the photo at home and I'm really impressed. PI catches the colors really good. And I like how it shows the street.

The Photo comes from the 13Pro. Unedited.

Don't give up hope on the iphones. The real Pixel style is very near.

PI gave me the hope, to stay with a Apple phone 🙂
Please don´t change this colors, DEV Team.
This is exactly what we love 🙂

Thank you so so much

M

michaelb79622326

Participant

Soorryyy,
here is the full res and link 🙂

https://ibb.co/5xR4NHZ5

T

Tom_Buckley7182

Participant

This has probably been brought up before. If I take a photo with P.I., edit with the native Apple camera or Snapseed then open it in Lightroom Mobile it reverts back to the original photo taken with P.I. Camera. Why is that?

R

RolandIEmbraceTheBlur

Participating Frequently

* i tried a cheapie bluetooth remote and it was terrible 🙂 it's easier for me 🙂 just to tap the screen

* I continue to love the app: https://flic.kr/p/2rkjGSX <-- 25x zoom photo of a taiko singer yesterday at the Powell Street Festival in Vancouver, Canada. I wouldn't have got this shot with any other app. Thanks team!

* Embrace the blur! This app is ALSO great at making blurry photos which I love (Pro Mode 1/30 of a second and/or slow shutter mode, both are great) https://flic.kr/p/2rjHi7y

H

Hans N 25

Participant

Got the sun yesterday wild fire smoke from out west here in Michigan

H

Hans N 25

Participant

I couldn't edit the above post, it was shot using 14 pro @ 6X SR fantastic detail much better than the iPhone at the same crop. I like the app for night and telephoto shots

W

WillSnaps

Participating Frequently

First I'd like to say thank you for making Indigo! It's really fantastic. I have a request: in the blog post you mentioned you'll be bringing video to Indigo. PLEASE make something like a "Night mode" for video! I suppose it couldn't work exactly same way as photo night mode, but I'm sure there's a way of making a video night mode. The newer Google Pixel phones already do this, they call it video Night Sight. I think the Indigo team could do an even better job at video night mode!

B

BroodjeKroket

Participant

Not sure if this is mentioned before, but I notice that when in the Filmpstrip or even when in the Settings-dialog the camera-usage green-led stays lit. This is clearly different than the default iPhone camera.

And even when running AI models, the green led indicator stays lit.

Does that mean that Project Indigo is still keeping on making photo's, even when not necessary?

If so, this would be a nice improvement.

B

BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

Not sure if this is mentioned before, but I notice that when in the Filmpstrip or even when in the Settings-dialog the camera-usage green-led stays lit. This is clearly different than the default iPhone camera.

And even when running AI models, the green led indicator stays lit.

Does that mean that Project Indigo is still keeping on making photo's, even when not necessary?

If so, this would be a nice improvement.

By @BroodjeKroket

Thank you for your feedback. Indigo doesn't capture any images while in the filmstrip, we just keep some aspects of the camera system running to enable fast return back to the viewfinder. If we turned the camera completely off we would need to start it from scratch, and that would incur delays every time users wanted to quicky get back and take a new snapshot. We will keep optimizing every aspect of the app, and will consider shutting the camera system down completely while in the filmstrip if we can achieve fast enough startup times.

A

ambitious_Explorer5534

Participant

Hello. At this point, have you managed to get the raw 48 megapixel images yet?

L

lincolns65043649

Inspiring

I've just started using Indigo which I'll edit on LRC.

Does it record GPS coordinates? I can't find them.

I hope so; it's really important to know exactly where the shot was taken.

Thanks

dj_paige

Legend

Perhaps some other forum (as this is not a question about Lightroo Classic) would be a better place for your question.

jimf16377877

Known Participant

I love Project Indigo! I would like to make the following suggestion/feature request: Having some of the controls always visible at the edges of the frame makes composition difficult at times. It would be great if there was some way to hide them and have a clear field of view after everything is set up for an exposure.

B

BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

Thank you for trying Project Indigo and for your feedback. We are aware of the preference by some users to be able to have a "clean" viewfinder when framing, and we are exploring ways for the UI to expose this functionality. Please stay tuned for updates such as that one.

S

schwartzworks

Participant

I have tested the Indigo app on an iPhone 16 Pro and I have to say it looks very promising. Even though the app still is under development the results usually look very good, clearly better compared to the native apps. Also, the "Indigo" profile in Lightroom Mobile works well. For the issues still remaining - is there a possibility for a "bug report"? I have occasionally seen weird local color casts and lack of detail. I do not necessarily want to share the images here, but if this would be the only way to provide feedback I will do so.

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