Community Manager

Sticky

P: Introducing the Project Indigo camera app

Forum|Forum|8 months ago
May 23, 2025
361 replies
232553 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

Posted by:

Show previous replies

T

Teragion

Participant

Thank you so much for developing this amazing app! After some simple tests, I found that the images captured by project indigo has so much finer detail and dynamic range than most other camera apps, making me eager to take only my phone instead of my cameras for a photo walk. However, there is a big obstacle for me.

As I own only an iPhone sold in Japan and living in Japan, it produces a loud shutter sound when photo is taken as per legal regulations (with privacy concerns). However, this appears disastrous for apps like Project Indigo as it capture a constant stream of images as soon as it is launched, render it unusable in any public settings even if I am not attempting to take any image violating others’ privacy. (As the noise is unbearable)

My suggestion is that, as it essentially captures a stream of images and selectively save frames, it is analogous to the function of capturing a video and record some interesting frames while recording using the camera button aside to the record button in the Apple’s stock camera app. Might there be a way to also treat project indigo’s image stream as a video capture thus only play sound when recording starts and ends?

B

BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

Hello - thank you for trying Indigo and for your message. We appreciate the inconvenience of trying to use the app while the shutter sound is continuously playing. We are looking into solutions for this together with Apple and will share an update as soon as we can.

Regarding your question about video, technically it is possible to use a short video stream instead of raw frames. However, that is likely to reduce the resulting image quality. We are hoping that we can resolve the shutter sound issue with Apple such that our customers in Japan can start using Indigo to its fullest.

D

DingMac

Participant

Brill new camera app, I find my iPhone Pro Max 15 gets really, really hot and unstable. A heatsink mod needed? LOL. ANYWAY... my joint RAW+Jpeg / Jpeg+RAW shots end up in Photos on my iMac and I cannot figure out getting the RAW file into Lightroom Classic. Please, how is this done? Someone please help! The export-unchanged original- save in folder X gets me a jpeg or a tiff file but I cannot get a RAW file to play with?

B

BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

Hello - thank you for trying Indigo and for your feedback. To get raw files to Lightroom Classic, Greg Benz has nicely listed options for how to get the files onto your machine (towards the bottom of the page): https://gregbenzphotography.com/photography-reviews/project-indigo-the-best-camera-app-for-smart-phones/

We will work on enabling DNG-only capture in a future update which will help mitigate this issue.

M

Moonboots22

Participating Frequently

When do you anticipate a second release that may address the overheating issue? Fixing that alone would make this a candidate as the preferred overall camera app on iPhone. I have a 16 Pro on the latest stable update but do get overheating issues with this.

I've been most impressed with the superzoom, and baked in reflection removal/AI denoise options. This shows tons of promise!

B

BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

Hello - thank you for reaching out. We are happy you are enjoying Indigo, and are working hard to help alleviate the overheating issues. A new version with improvements on that front is coming shortly.

E

Eli Johanson

Participating Frequently

Sharing photos taken in Indigo. Shot in RAW format, edited in Adobe Camera Raw. In my opinion, the most valuable feature of the Indigo app is its 10x digital zoom. Photos taken with the standard 1x lens are barely different from the unprocessed RAW files. I use the Fjorden Camera app, and the results are practically indistinguishable.

Like many others here on the forum, I have a Japanese iPhone 15 Pro Max. The constant shutter sound is really annoying.

N

Norman359727959y38

Participating Frequently

Have you tried pinch zooming to 25xSR? That's really worth testing ...

E

Ed5E57

Participating Frequently

I'm on a iPhone 14 Pro. The app is causing the phone to overheat which then causes it to crash.

B

BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

Hello - thank you for trying Indigo and for providing your feedback about the overheating issues. We are hard at work to minimize instances of overheating and will be releasing an updated version of the app soon. Once it is out we hope you will give it a spin and let us know whether this new version has indeed helped with overheating.

E

Ed5E57

Participating Frequently

I will and thank you. It is a very interesting app. One other question is that I doesn’t seem to use the x1 proraw raw 48MP. Will it in the future?

Get Outlook for iOS<>

F

frankherzog

Participating Frequently

My question is simple: how are you going to set up your Indigo camera for 4th of July fireworks?

Frank H.

B

BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

Hi Frank - thank you for reaching out with this question. Our resident photographer, Florian Kainz (who captured many images from the Project Indigo blog) helped me collect best practices for capturing fireworks. Hope you get to try it out and can let us know how the event went.

Strong recommendation to use a tripod for the whole event.
- Frame the shot before or at the beginning of the show.
- Consider using a Bluetooth remote to trigger the shutter. That way you can watch the show and take pictures without constantly staring at your phone.
- If you are adventurous, take a picture of the environment before or after the show, and later blend it with the fireworks shots using Photoshop.
To get sharp, low-noise images, use the 1× lens and find a spot from where the fireworks will fill most of the frame.
- Avoid digital zooming.
Before the show starts, manually focus the camera on something “at infinity,” for example, a streetlight or the windows of a building a few hundred feet away.
- Use the loupe to find the best focus setting.
- On some iPhone models there’s a noticeable focus shift when the phone warms up, so it’s a good idea to let Indigo run for a minute or so before focusing the camera.
Use Night mode.
In Pro controls, use the following settings:
- Lowest ISO setting (e.g. 50).
- Set Frames to Merge to 1.
- Set Merge Method to Long Exposure.
- Set the shutter speed to Auto.
- Set Exposure to somewhere between -1 and -2.
- Set White balance with Temperature around 4000K and Tint 0, as this tends to produce pleasing colors.
Indigo’s AI look may brighten the background around the fireworks so much that it looks grainy. You can fix this by opening the DNG file in Lightroom or Photoshop and manually adjusting Exposure, Shadows and Highlights.

F

frankherzog

Participating Frequently

Great answer. Thank you!
Frank

Sent from my iPhone

N

nhan_8084

Participating Frequently

I found another bug with photos taken with Indigo. If you use magic eraser or object remover using apple photos or gphotos, the photo becomes extremely reddish magenta when viewed. Please find a way to fix it so it does not happen @BorisTheBlade

B

BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

Thank you for reporting this finding. The team will investigate and share a version with a fix as soon as it is available.

D

DF Wilkinson

Participating Frequently

Recently downloaded PI and have used it taking a variety of scenics, and comparing the same to IPhone 16 pro camera. At less then half the DNG file size on PI compared to 16Pro the results are impressive. So cudos to the tech team. I know this is still being developed, but a few comments. I basically shoot RAW processed in ACR. Option to also chose DNG only should be there. As it is I import via the Bridge Camera importer and then have to delete all the JPG's. Also tried proccessing in LR Mobile the dng file and jpeg file to see how it works compared to ACR. All edits look fine until you apply them (Done Button). The file turns into a weired looking Magenta mess? This does not occur on my Mac desktop. Also tried through Apple photo camera roll edit and the same thing happens. The "PRO" setting is buggy in that it isn't holding the setting put in for shutter or focus? Other wise no issues opening the app with side camera button or releasing the shutter, and also works with phone timer. One last comment, Testing the SDR/HDR, I find setting the mode in ACR, to SDR and Adobe Adaptive color seems to give excellent results with onlyslight further adjustments in the Light dropdown menu.

B

BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

Hello - thank you for trying Indigo and for your comments. Some of them are already on our list, and we'll share updated builds as the features are ready.

On the images getting magenta after editing in Lightroom mobile app, I am not able to reproduce the issue. Can you share a DNG file with me which exhibits the issue (compress into .zip first as the forum won't accept DNG file format for attachments), and any additional information about the steps taken to achieve such a result?
On the Pro settings not holding, can you elaborate on that? How are you turning Pro controls on and off, and how are you setting indiidual Pro controls (e.g., focus)?

D

dippyshere_

Participant

Incredible app, but about that iOS 18.5 requirement - can this be lowered to 18.0 in a future update? All of the app's frameworks are already targeting 18.0, and as far as I can tell all APIs Indigo uses are available in 18.0.

B

BorisTheBlade

Adobe Employee

Hello - thank you for trying Indigo and for reaching out. The team will keep the lowest iOS version possible, but often there are under-the-hood changes introduces in new iOS versions which help Indigo with speed, stability, or quality.

J

JakeInJP

Participant

Tried to use the app, but the shutter sound plays constantly and it makes it unusable. Suspect this is due to being based in Japan, where the shutter sound can't be switched off. Is there an issue logged for this, and plans to address it?

J

JakeInJP

Participant

Just saw the post above, sorry missed it when I first posted. Hopefully the fix comes soon so the 70m+ iPhone users in these markets can use this app...

Show more replies

Sign up

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Sign in to Adobe Community

To post, reply, or follow discussions, please sign in with your Adobe ID.

Scanning file for viruses.

This file cannot be downloaded