P: Introducing the Project Indigo camera app

It is frustrating trying to do a systematic evaluation of Indigo because it does not record proper metadata for the Focal Length 35mm. I try to be systematic in evaluation photographic equipment. In the case of Indigo, this means organizing files by the  Focal Length 35mm equivalent. For some reason Indigo incorrectly records this import metadata. The result is a frustrating amount of time required to cross reference files imported to a desktop computer, viewed in Lighroom, against the Indigo app's information for each file indicating what the digital zoom was. For example, I want to organize all of the images shot at 48 mm SR into a single folder. This way I can compare them to 48 mm images taken with the Apple camera app or a different camera app. Indigo incorrectly shows 24mm as the 35mm equivalent focal length for both 24 mm and 48 mm shots. This is true of 100 mm and 200 mm shots If you want a systematic and proper evaluation done of the Indigo app it would be very helpful that the metadata is recorded accurately. In analysing the iPhone 17 pro camera apps, I treat the iPhone as three different cameras. In addition I want to further differentiate between 24 mm vs 48 mm and 100 mm vs 200 mm photos. This is the basis for evaluating a camera app ability to record images using 14 mm, 24 mm, 48 mm, 100 mm and 200 mm settings.   

By @Sweet Light

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. It is definitely clear how this may create some difficulties in a workflow that you describe... we'll look into the EXIF/DNG tags to see if there is perhaps a better way to note the camera characteristics in the image. This is however a bit of a philosophical question: how do you record focal length for a photo which is a combination of some optical properties of the lens AND digital zoom obtained by cropping the sensor? Typically focal lenght entails not just the FOV of the lens, but also such characteristics as minimum focus, depth-of-field, etc. When digitally cropping, only the FOV is changed while everything else remains the same. So we opted to record optical and digital factors separately. I read many articles that came out when iPhone 17 was announced (example LINK) criticizing this introduction of confusion between claiming a focal length and claiming "optical quality", which kind of goes at the heart of what we are talking about. Happy to hear any suggestions you may have on ways to handle this.

I never understood this obsessions with megapixels.
I'd take color rendition over megapixels any day and in that regard Indigo reminds me of Foveon camera color rendition (Sigma DP2 as prime example)

Just a note, I have personally tested SR at 2x and the 8x (17 pro max), and the 10x (15 pro max) and it causes severe mushing and denoising along with artifacts of incomplete imaging (merging and alignment issue) if there are motion detected in the scene.  Even the very slight wind movement of foliages causes mush in jpeg AND raw.  I have brought this up to the team and they will work on improving the AI algorithm.

I am a new user to Indigo, having just upgraded from an old iPhone XR to the iPhone 17 Pro. I have started testing using the iPhone on a tripod, comparing the native phone app to Indigo. On a 14mm photo, I noticed a subtle white band in the sky. The shape of a rainbow, but not a rainbow, just white. Is there a way of sharing the file with Adobe that is not public?

By @Sweet Light

Thank you for reporting this - we are aware of some problems on 17-series devices with lens vignetting calibration and are working with Apple to resolve that. It is possible that the problem is fixed in iOS 26.1, which we are trying to verify. For sharing files privately I will look into that, as we currently do not have a mechanism for it. As you can imagine, we cannot publicly share teammembers' emails.

Also forgot to add, it seems like max zoom is now only 20x vs 25x before to match native cam on iPhone 15 pro max.  Can the team make it have zoom up to 40x to match apple's native zoom?  Of course with less denoising and mush once the team update the AI algos.

By @nhan_8084

Since we only get a 12MP image resolution in bayer raw, if we were to zoom to 40x we'd need to employ 10x digital zoom, which would leave only 0.12MP of input size to work with. This is not enough to create a meaningful 12MP result photo without using hallucination (i.e., Generative AI). Therefore we are limiting the digital zoom to 5x.

Took this pic on my iPhone 17 pro max using the latest Indigo version, the jpeg white balance is not accurate.  It did proper white balance to white but it isn't scene accurate as it nuked the 4000K softwhite yellowish hue cast.   I have attached the auto jpeg, raw, and correct post processed jpg.

raw: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/s2g2ju1x70d0nrtmnmqyu/Photo-Nov-01-2025-9-26-14-AM.dng?rlkey=osywx60xb7netoz8sz0l7xah6&st=4eu7gm8x&dl=0

By @nhan_8084

Thank you for sharing these - I will pass them to the team to review.

Thanks so much for the app, the result it produces remind some of my favorite phone photography taken on nexus. I wish I could use the project indigo as my main camera app but the only problem stopping me doing so right now is that the app opens significantly slower than native camera app. It not only has a logo screen for half second, but a long lag for camera to be active (blackout at the beginning of entering the interface. the native camera app does that too but with a much shorter duration) I do a lot street photography, and this makes the flow sometimes awkward. Not to say taking photo of my cats, right now I only have the confidence to use indigo when they are sleeping.

By @WangZheng

Thank you for sharing your thoughts on Indigo. Indeed, the native camera app will load the fastest. For Indigo we need to prepare a few things before the camera can be used, and they take some time. We will keep optimizing the startup sequence to squeeze any performance we can out of it. For reference, not all ways to start the app operate equally fast: in my personal experience, starting the app from the Lock/Home screen or with the Action button are the fastest methods, while using the Camera app or the Control center shortcut are slower. 

*With the first question I mean the general android port and the second question is more about a very rough estimation which specific device tiers and generations may be compatible. If even old android devices can be supported as long as they have a big ram to compensate missing performance, for example.