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Rikk Flohr_Photography
Community Manager
Rikk Flohr_PhotographyCommunity Manager
May 23, 2025

P: Introducing the Project Indigo camera app

  • 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. 

 

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 
 
Posted by: 

 

      406 replies

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      nhan_8084
      Known Participant
      July 10, 2025

      Took a indoor, decent lighting 2x SR, and it looks like it has spots of blotching due to denoising algorithms.  Can also see denoising is way too strong because the pillow is microfiber, and all textures are lost.  This is also exhibited in 10x, with movement very bad in 10x.  Movement in 2X SR isn't too bad.

      N
      nhan_8084
      Known Participant
      July 11, 2025

      @BorisTheBlade What are your thoughts on the 2x and 10x SR adjustments from the pictures I have shared?

      B
      Adobe Employee
      BorisTheBlade
      Adobe Employee
      July 11, 2025

      The team will be looking at these. Note that tuning image quality is not an easy thing - we have to look at hundreds/thousands of images to verify that we are not making many use-cases worse by improving one or two. So it will take time. Also, image quality is in many ways subjective: what looks good to you or I may not look good to others. Expect such improvements to roll in gradually over time. I will also be talking to the team about adding configurable post-processing so end users can, if they wish, tune it to their liking. If we decide to implement it, this will also take time. Indigo is experimental, and there are a lot of places we can improve things, but we cannot do them all at once.

        C
        chrisd40442477
        Participating Frequently
        July 9, 2025

        Enjoying indigo. I think it's an upgrade from other iPhone camera apps.

         

        My issue is, I don't use Lightroom, dropped it about a decade ago. I am a heavy user of capture one. Can I take advantage of all of current and future features for this  fantastic iOS camera app without using Lightroom?

         

        Even if indigo required me to start using Lightroom I would not under any circumstances. Too heavily invested in the capture one environment.  

        B
        Adobe Employee
        BorisTheBlade
        Adobe Employee
        July 9, 2025

        Hi Chris - thank you for your message. The DNG produced by Indigo is fully compliant with the public DNG spec, so in theory any image editor could support it 100% and you wouldn't need Lightroom for that. In practice though, most editors provide only a partial support for the spec, so some things may not work as intended, for example the Look Up Tables we store for tone and color. Having said that, the raw data is still the raw data, and any editor will access that without an issue, so you can keep using Indigo images that way without any concerns.

        C
        chrisd40442477
        Participating Frequently
        July 9, 2025

        Hi:  I appreciate your update!   My enjoyment with Indego  has been exclusively with the jpgs produced from the app. I DO HAVE JPG+RAW enabled in the app.  I can see the icon on the camera screen (upper left corner).  BUT, I've NOT been able to find a way to view, extract, use, manipulate or experiment with a raw file.  Can't find information anywhere.  It's frustrating but given how good the JPG's look, I'm optimistic for the future once I get RAW file capabilities unlocked!

        N
        nhan_8084
        Known Participant
        July 9, 2025

        @BorisTheBlade the 1x shot against the sun seems to have edge alisasing of some sort, it's razor edge and lines.  One crop view is as is when imported to lightroom and the other is with adjustments.  I am not sure if this is caused by missed focus, missalignment, or aliasing as I mentioned.

        B
        Adobe Employee
        BorisTheBlade
        Adobe Employee
        July 10, 2025
        quote

        @BorisTheBlade the 1x shot against the sun seems to have edge alisasing of some sort, it's razor edge and lines.  One crop view is as is when imported to lightroom and the other is with adjustments.  I am not sure if this is caused by missed focus, missalignment, or aliasing as I mentioned.


        By @nhan_8084

        Hello - thank you for reporting this. We have some suspicions what this may be, but would need a DNG to confirm. Are you able to share it (via DropBox, Google Drive, or similar)? Thank you for continuing to use Indigo and providing feedback!

        N
        nhan_8084
        Known Participant
        July 10, 2025

        I can if I have the dng via pc.  Ill try to get it somehow!

          V
          Vitor_Pivetta3316
          Participant
          July 9, 2025

          Hello, first of all, excellent project, really promising. I'd like to know if you plan to add some kind of "action" mode, because I notice that sometimes the photos I take of my animals come out blurry if they move. Again, thank you very much for the promising project!

          B
          Adobe Employee
          BorisTheBlade
          Adobe Employee
          July 9, 2025
          @Vitor_Pivetta3316 wrote:

          Hello, first of all, excellent project, really promising. I'd like to know if you plan to add some kind of "action" mode, because I notice that sometimes the photos I take of my animals come out blurry if they move. Again, thank you very much for the promising project!

           

          Hello Vitor - thank you for your interest in Indigo and your feedback. We will look into ways to add ability in Indigo to capture more use-cases, such as fast action. In the mean-time, what you can try is to use Pro controls by:

          1. Reducing the shutter speed, while keeping the ISO automatic.
          2. Reducing the number of frames captured (Night mode-only) to see if that makes it better for your needs. If you are capturing in very bright enviroment, you can make the number of frames all the way down to 1.
          D
          deejayceejay_1426
          Participant
          July 9, 2025

          •  

            Hi! Is this normal in night photography? If it's not is there a work around? It's my first time using the app to take photos at night time

          B
          Adobe Employee
          BorisTheBlade
          Adobe Employee
          July 9, 2025
          quote

          Hi! Is this normal in night photography? If it's not is there a work around? It's my first time using the app to take photos at night time


          By @deejayceejay_1426

          Hello - thank you for trying Indigo and reporting your experience. I have a few questions regarding the problem you experienced:

          • Did you capture the scene in Night mode or Photo mode?
          • Did you use Indigo in auto mode, or did you set some parameters manually with Pro controls?
          • Was the camera mostly static (handheld or tripod), or was it moving a bit?

           

          If you are able to share DNGs with us that would help a great deal. Direct DNG sharing is unfortunately not working at the moment, but you could share via DropBox, Google Drive or similar.

           

          Thank you for triaging this issue with us!

          F
          FitzFoto12089247
          Inspiring
          July 9, 2025

          Photo 1 using iPhone 16 Pro native Camera app @ 5 X, cropped in Photos to the same size (roughly) as ...

          Photo 2 using Indigo @ 10X.

           

          The differences are obvious, with the native app giving more accurate colour rendition, but less dynamic range.

          B
          Adobe Employee
          BorisTheBlade
          Adobe Employee
          July 9, 2025
          quote

          Photo 1 using iPhone 16 Pro native Camera app @ 5 X, cropped in Photos to the same size (roughly) as ...

          Photo 2 using Indigo @ 10X.

           

          The differences are obvious, with the native app giving more accurate colour rendition, but less dynamic range.


          By @FitzFoto12089247

          Thank you for reporting your findings. I have a question though: why did you decide to capture at 5x with the native camera and 10x with Indigo? If you use 10x for both cameras, how do the results compare then? Also, if you don't mind sharing which capture mode you used in Indigo (Photo or Night), and whether you had any Pro Controls active or was it in full auto mode?

          N
          nhan_8084
          Known Participant
          July 10, 2025

          My guess is that maybe he thinks that 5x native is optical will give him better details vs apple's digital crop could do some processing, to do versus indigo's 10x SR.  Either way far superior with Indigo's SR.

          F
          frankherzog
          Participating Frequently
          July 8, 2025

          I've done virtually everything to see if Indigo is REALLY that good and each experience comes back with a resounding YES, it IS that good!  Bird photography has eluded me for years.  Taken  today with Indigo at 10X on a 16 pro max.   I'm done testing.

            C
            chrisd40442477
            Participating Frequently
            July 8, 2025

            Good morning.   Very optimistic having gone thru my first attempts using Indigo.  Problem I'm having.  I do see DNG+RAW in the upper left hand corner of the screen. BUT, I don't see any way to access the raw file.  Everything I shoot is a jpg only?

            mopperle
            mopperle
            Inspiring
            July 8, 2025

            Has been asked and answered already many times. Adobe is currently working on a solution to make dng only available.

            For the moment, read this article with many more infos about Indigo and it also describes a workaround:
            https://gregbenzphotography.com/photography-reviews/project-indigo-the-best-camera-app-for-smart-phones/

            J
            Jon_Shrago4851
            Participant
            July 8, 2025

            I adore the app - shots with it are more vibrant, clearer, nicer contrast and the out of focus areas are far less distracting. Indigo shots feel better to me.

            However I'm pretty sure there is a problem with focusing. Particularly at distances close to minimum I've really struggled to get the plane of focus. One example I used the 5x lens on stock camera - focused no problem. The 5x on Indigo didn't focus and couldn't even get close on manual - it was as if the two apps were using different lenses with different capabilities.

             

            So - autofocus seems inaccurate on most lenses.

            At close range, it can even lack the ability to focus at lengths the stock app manages.

            B
            Adobe Employee
            BorisTheBlade
            Adobe Employee
            July 9, 2025

            Hello Jon - thank you for trying out Indigo and for providing feedback. Regarding focusing, the native camera app always runs what they call a "fusion camera", i.e., all 3 cameras are active at all times. That way, if they detect that the minimum focus distance for a lens is too long, they automatically switch the lens under the hood. A simple way to test that is to do the following: change the lens to 5x, move close to your target object (say, to 30cm/1ft), capture a photo, then in Apple Photos inspect the image metadata. It should say "Fusion camera" and right next to it it will say 24mm for focal length (i.e., the 1x lens), while below the focal length will be displayed as 120mm (i.e., the 5x lens). The camera used 1x lens and cropped it to match the 5x FOV without informing the user at capture time.

            Indigo can only run one camera at the time, so we cannot do this kind of switching seamlessly, which is why we suggest Macro mode to users once we detect that the subject is too close.

            P
            photochem62
            Participant
            July 7, 2025

            Feature request: Add an on/off toggle for the "Zero Shutter Lag" feature in "Photo Mode." Should save some battery power; constant pre-focusing Is not needed for static scenes. 

            Reference the "Pre-AF" function in Sony Alpha 7/9 Series cameras. 

            Thanks and keep up the great work. 

            B
            Adobe Employee
            BorisTheBlade
            Adobe Employee
            July 8, 2025

            Hello - thank you for trying Indigo and for your suggestion. We will consider your feature request for a future version of the app.

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