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

P: Introducing the Project Indigo camera app

  • May 23, 2025
  • 344 replies
  • 224923 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 thiProject 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: 

 

    344 replies

    New Participant
    June 18, 2025

    Hi,

    I am really excited this app but as I was trying this app on my 16pro, it seems not working and only showing a black screen. Wondering if there's any solotions?

    Adobe Employee
    June 18, 2025

    Hello - thank you for reaching out, and sorry for the troubles you are facing. Can you share some more information about the symptoms you are seeing: is the UI also frozen or does tapping on buttons do anything, which country is your device/Apple account from, how long have you tried leaving Indigo with the black viewfinder?

     

    There are 3 things you can try:

    • Try to run the native camera app and then switch back to Indigo.
    • Try to restart the device.
    • Try to completely remove Indigo and reinstall from scratch.

     

    Let me know if any of these helped, and thank you for your patience!

    New Participant
    June 17, 2025

    Hi, great idea, great concepts. Just did some tests, my first feedback:

    I love the tips: move back or go to macro - but where can I enable macro when I know I want to do macro?

    second issue:

    I' m on a iPhone 12 pro, I get constantly the warning:  iPhone overheating blah blah. Yes it gets warm. Maybe some tweaking of the code necessary?

    Adobe Employee
    June 17, 2025

    Hi Harald, thank you for your interest in Project Indigo and your feedback. Currently there is no way to manually enable the Macro mode. It is on our TODO list to explore ways to nicely expose Macro as a user-selectable mode. On the thermal issues with some devices, especially older ones, we are aware of the reports from our customers and we are taking them seriously. The team is exploring options for further optimizations and will roll out improvements as they become available.

    Participating Frequently
    June 20, 2025

    @BorisTheBlade it seems that macro mode activated on 5x if face is detected and subject is too close!  I saw this function yesterday when trying to photo shoot my son, and he was too close to the lens vs  the allowed focal length.  The macro mode triggers ultra wide angle mode, if you try this on objects it doesn't work.

    New Participant
    June 17, 2025

    Thanks for developing this app. A nice addition would be to add a remote for the Apple Watch, as other camera apps have. This will be usefull for night or long exposures.

    Participating Frequently
    June 17, 2025

    Hello - thank you for your email and your suggestion. Adding Apple Watch controls for Indigo is something we are planning to do in the future.

    Curtis Hight
    New Participant
    June 16, 2025

    In the blog post (Marc Levoy and Florian Kainz, “Project Indigo - a computational photography camera app,” Adobe, June 13, 2025), as I read down, I saw the slow-drip water photos, then the external strobe, and then the words “As a fun example of how our manual controls can be used….” Excitement stirred in my heart that the following words would say something about an upcoming version of Indigo supporting electronic strobe synchronization. Alas, not. But I hope so!

    Adobe Employee
    June 17, 2025
    quote

    In the blog post (Marc Levoy and Florian Kainz, “Project Indigo - a computational photography camera app,” Adobe, June 13, 2025), as I read down, I saw the slow-drip water photos, then the external strobe, and then the words “As a fun example of how our manual controls can be used….” Excitement stirred in my heart that the following words would say something about an upcoming version of Indigo supporting electronic strobe synchronization. Alas, not. But I hope so!


    By @Curtis Hight

    Hi Curtis - thank you for your thoughts. Indigo doesn't yet support strobe synchronization, but we can add it to the list of feature asks and consider it in a future version.

    Inspiring
    June 16, 2025

    Does the JPEG file contain a depth map that's passed onto Lightroom to add "Blur"?

    Participating Frequently
    June 16, 2025
    quote

    Does the JPEG file contain a depth map that's passed onto Lightroom to add "Blur"?


    By @@sydneylow

    Hello,

    JPEGs produced by the Indigo camera do not yet contain a depth map which Lightroom can use for the Lens Blur feature. We will be investigating adding a depth map to files captured by Indigo in the future.

    Participating Frequently
    June 19, 2025

    @BorisTheBlade , apple allows lidar for AR use, will PI be able to use that information to create true depth map vs the computational depth of google camera?  That would be much easier vs training ML models, and needing hundreds of photos data on a server like what google did for their portrait matting. 

    New Participant
    June 16, 2025

    HI, this app looks amazing but I only have an IPhone 11 Pro Max. Does this mean I can't use the app with this phone?

    Participating Frequently
    June 16, 2025
    quote

    HI, this app looks amazing but I only have an IPhone 11 Pro Max. Does this mean I can't use the app with this phone?


    By @ronh45669430

    Hello - for the time being, Indigo camera requires at least a 12 Pro/Pro Max device to run. For better experience we recommend using 15 Pro/Pro Max or newer models.

    Participating Frequently
    June 14, 2025

     10x super res zoom on my 15 pro max has a lot of merge artifacts.  Also when facing against hdr, it has heavy underexposure and tint issue, and wb is too warm vs realistic scene as shown in pro mode vs auto.

    Participating Frequently
    June 16, 2025

    @BorisTheBlade2 Please respond or if I could

    reach an engineer to discuss?

    Adobe Employee
    June 17, 2025
    quote

    @BorisTheBlade2 Please respond or if I could

    reach an engineer to discuss?


    By @nhan_8084

    About the first example (merge artifacts for 10x super-res zoom), they can appear, more so in Night mode, if the subject is moving during capture. We will be further tuning and optimizing the super-res algorithm to minimize such occurences.

    On the white balance, Indigo does not emply a custom AWB. Instead, it uses AWB routine provided by the OS. Sometimes it can be off, which is when using Pro controls can help to achieve good WB quickly: you can simply tap on a neutral grey colored object and WB will be set correctly.

    New Participant
    June 14, 2025

    Thanks for taking imaging to another level!  Looking forward to seeing how further computational photography develops. 

    I'm testing the app out on my iPhone 15 max pro. Stopped by the beach and took 8-10 test images. My iPhone started giving me an overheating notice after that and I could feel it getting very hot. 

    I was shooting in 90 degree tropical weather, and tried the 'sr' features, probably the intense processing required caused it to overheat. 

     

     

     

    Participating Frequently
    June 14, 2025

    i think it still needs some optimization because even when i was inside my phone got hot after 5 images and it showed me a warning and started crashing. Im using iphone 14.

    Inspiring
    June 16, 2025

    It's the same for me on an iPhone 16 Pro

    Inspiring
    June 14, 2025

    Indigo is amazing!

    I just published a detailed review and tutorial on it at https://gregbenzphotography.com/photography-reviews/project-indigo-the-best-camera-app-for-smart-phones/

    New Participant
    June 17, 2025

    As usual - Greg was right on the spot. Great betaApp, great review

    New Participant
    June 14, 2025

    I’m writing to report an issue with continuous shutter-click sounds when using Project Indigo in Japan.

     

    In Photo mode, Indigo continuously buffers short-exposure frames even before I press the shutter, so iOS plays the mandatory camera-shutter sound for every buffered frame. Because Japanese carriers require an audible click for each still-image capture, this results in a rapid “click-click-click” sequence at roughly three to four clicks per second, long before any photo is taken. The sound is loud and confusing. 

     

    What I expected was a single shutter sound, only at the moment the final photo is captured. Instead, the pre-capture pipeline makes the app practically unusable in many everyday situations here.

     

    To improve the experience, please consider batching the shutter sound so it plays only once per composite capture, providing a toggle to disable or limit pre-capture when the device is in Japan, or switching the buffer to a silent video stream until the user actually presses the shutter. Even a brief notice in the settings or FAQ, explaining why the clicks occur and how to minimize them, would help.

    Participating Frequently
    June 16, 2025
    quote

    I’m writing to report an issue with continuous shutter-click sounds when using Project Indigo in Japan.

     

    In Photo mode, Indigo continuously buffers short-exposure frames even before I press the shutter, so iOS plays the mandatory camera-shutter sound for every buffered frame. Because Japanese carriers require an audible click for each still-image capture, this results in a rapid “click-click-click” sequence at roughly three to four clicks per second, long before any photo is taken. The sound is loud and confusing. 

     

    What I expected was a single shutter sound, only at the moment the final photo is captured. Instead, the pre-capture pipeline makes the app practically unusable in many everyday situations here.

     

    To improve the experience, please consider batching the shutter sound so it plays only once per composite capture, providing a toggle to disable or limit pre-capture when the device is in Japan, or switching the buffer to a silent video stream until the user actually presses the shutter. Even a brief notice in the settings or FAQ, explaining why the clicks occur and how to minimize them, would help.


    By @JUNSHENG_ZENG6158

    Hello,

    Thank you for reporting this issue. Indigo camera runs a constant stream of raw frames during viewfinding and stores them temporarily in a buffer. When a shutter button is pressed, we combine several of those frames into one photo and we issue a shutter sound. However, in Japan and South Korea there is a requirement that every raw photo request to iOS must issue a shutter sound, even if that raw frame is not used for the capture. That is why our viewfinder sounds like it is constantly "capturing" photos. The only workaround we can offer for the time being is to turn off the sound on the device.

    Inspiring
    June 17, 2025

    I'm in South Korea. The workaround offered is not a possibility. Because the shutter sound is a legal requirement, it cannot be turned off. The volume is also not adjustable. So everyone in Japan and South Korea will hear the loud shutter clicks. This makes the app unusable. I can't see how you are going to manage to get around this one.  Such a pity. I was so looking forward to a decent photo app.