Skip to main content
Rikk Flohr_Photography
Community Manager
Rikk Flohr_PhotographyCommunity Manager
May 23, 2025
Sticky

P: Introducing the Project Indigo camera app

  • May 23, 2025
  • 401 replies
  • 241994 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: 

 

      401 replies

      Show previous replies
      N
      nhan_8084
      Known Participant
      April 10, 2026

      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!

      N
      nhan_8084
      Known Participant
      April 10, 2026

      ​@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.

       

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

       

      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!

      N
      nhan_8084
      Known Participant
      April 10, 2026

      This is the 8x post via lrm

      N
      nhan_8084
      Known Participant
      April 10, 2026

      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/r0hq3lk4kb6kp3i76hdak/IDG_20260409_202657_627.jpeg?rlkey=c7u4uryymqi7bmf4m6q1sd9bn&st=nfkydvuu&dl=0

       

      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

      N
      nhan_8084
      Known Participant
      April 9, 2026

      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 

      N
      nhan_8084
      Known Participant
      April 9, 2026

      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
      April 9, 2026

      ​@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?

      B
      Adobe Employee
      BorisTheBlade
      Adobe Employee
      April 9, 2026

      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
        April 9, 2026

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

        B
        Adobe Employee
        BorisTheBlade
        Adobe Employee
        April 9, 2026

        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
        April 8, 2026

        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

        B
        Adobe Employee
        BorisTheBlade
        Adobe Employee
        April 9, 2026

        Hello Marten. Thank you for reaching out. Can you check whether you disabled BurstSR in the settings? It looks like this was a macro capture, so you probably had 1x Macro, which means 0.5x lens was used with 2x digital upscaling. The way Indigo works is that, if digital zoom is used (i.e., the sensor FOV is cropped) the JPEG is always upscaled to 12MP, but the DNG is only upscaled by 2x if BurstSR is enabled. So, if you do 2x digital upscaling, the DNG will be 12MP. If you do 4x digital upscaling, the DNG will be 3MP. However, if BurstSR is disabled then there is no upscaling of the DNG and you get exactly what the crop was: for 2x digital zoom it’s 3MP, and for 4x digital zoom it’s ~1.3MP.

        If you do have BurstSR enabled, then either you used Macro but with a 2x-equivalent zoom (i.e., 0.5x lens with 4x digital zoom), or there is a bug somewhere and we’d need to investigate. I’ll see if the metadata in the JPEG you shared is enough for us to figure out what happened.

        N
        nhan_8084
        Known Participant
        March 30, 2026

        Hi ​@Rikk Flohr_Photography and ​@BorisTheBlade, this question is more for lightroom mobile than it is more for Indigo.  I noticed that if using the latest lrm on latest iOS for my 17 pro max on the 48mp pro raw dng, and exporting it as jpeg, the result is much different than if you using nomacs on pc or any adobe app on pc.  The adobe pc apps export similar as the lrm app if it helps, but nomacs output differently (more detailed).

         

        Instructions: Take 48mp proraw on main lens on the 17 pro/pro max series (preferrable on foliages like pine trees for high frequencies detailing), import to lightroom mobile, go to profiles, slide apple proraw profiles to 0, turn off all denoising and sharpening as well.  Then go to light tab, slide exposure up to like +2 or so (maybe higher) to make picture visible, then slide shadows to +100.  Export as jpeg.  Now do the same in nomacs pc app, adobe lightroom classic or photoshop.  You will see that the nomacs jpeg export has fine details while the other apps will still have the softness and heavy denoising applied.  I did this over the weekend, on multiple different scenes and nomacs jpeg output always have more details.

         

        I can attach a raw file for testing as well.

        N
        nhan_8084
        Known Participant
        March 30, 2026

        Update: So from further testing, it looks like somehow lightroom mobile is not rejecting the metadata from the embedded portion of the proraw, no matter what you changed it’s pretty much you editing the jpeg of it via the raw container and not the actual dng.  There’s an android app called unmcrawsome that is able to remove the metadata it seems and was able to process the dng only!

        homerwooper
        homerwooper
        Participant
        March 27, 2026

        why can't use flashlight

        N
        nhan_8084
        Known Participant
        March 24, 2026

        ​@BorisTheBlade qdwang, the developer of Camac mentioned that iOS 26.4 supports 12 bit avif.  Would this benefit Indigo going forward to support true 12 bit hdr raw?  This would be amazing if Indigo can do this!

        B
        Adobe Employee
        BorisTheBlade
        Adobe Employee
        April 1, 2026

        Indigo is already using 16 bits for raw DNG.

        N
        nhan_8084
        Known Participant
        April 2, 2026

        ​@BorisTheBlade 16 bit as in hosting 16 bit content not as 12bit or 16 bit via white level and black level?  Ie… 10bit is 1023 white level which I am sure Indigo’s same.

        Show more replies
        Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
        Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices