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May 23, 2025
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P: Introducing the Project Indigo camera app

  • May 23, 2025
  • 361 replies
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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: 

 

    361 replies

    Participant
    October 24, 2025

    hallo

    ein tolles und gelungenes kamera-app dass ich täglich verwende... wenn ich kann! leider funktiniert es nicht mehr bei meinem neuen iphone 17 promax... und indigo fehlt mir... sehr.

    ich wünsch uns, ich wünsche mir, das ihr das projekt indigo auch auf die neuen iphone 17 und 17 promax zugänglich macht... denn indigo ist das app was die kamera von apple iphone braucht!

    herzliche grüsse,

    rudolf

    Adobe Employee
    October 24, 2025
    quote

    hallo

    ein tolles und gelungenes kamera-app dass ich täglich verwende... wenn ich kann! leider funktiniert es nicht mehr bei meinem neuen iphone 17 promax... und indigo fehlt mir... sehr.

    ich wünsch uns, ich wünsche mir, das ihr das projekt indigo auch auf die neuen iphone 17 und 17 promax zugänglich macht... denn indigo ist das app was die kamera von apple iphone braucht!

    herzliche grüsse,

    rudolf


    By @Rudolf_Steiner4877

    Hallo Rudolf,

     

    Thank you for your message (I'll stick with English as my written German is quite poor) - we released a version of Indigo with support for 17-series devices earlier today. Please try it out and let us know what you think. It does have some limitations which we have listed in the release notes and the 'What's New' welcome screen.

    Participant
    October 22, 2025

    My favorite app, PERIOD ! I love the photos this camera captures and I am so sad I haven't been able to use it with my iPhone 17 Pro! Please don't give up and update as soon as you can so I can start taking my favorite pictures again!!

    Adobe Employee
    October 24, 2025
    quote

    My favorite app, PERIOD ! I love the photos this camera captures and I am so sad I haven't been able to use it with my iPhone 17 Pro! Please don't give up and update as soon as you can so I can start taking my favorite pictures again!!


    By @zach_6412

    iPhone 17-compatible build is up. Please give it a whirl and let us know how it works for you. Note that there are some limitations, which are listed in the release notes on the App Store pages and in the 'What's new' welcome screen.

    Participant
    October 22, 2025

    I noticed that the app white balance (or algorithm) has a tendency to de a blue hue (as you can see in the shared pictures) in the shadow area instead of a black or warmer one. 
    Generally it's this hint that allow me to instantly know if a picture has been taken with project indigo.

    is it an artefact or the intended signature of the computational photography algorithm ?

     

    Participant
    October 22, 2025

    I absolutely love the Project Indigo app! It’s such a relief to finally take photos that look naturally beautiful instead of being over-processed like on the stock app.

     

    However the processing time slows down shooting a lot, especially when you’re out and about capturing moments on the go.

     

    Here’s a simple suggestion = if possible please implement a “Process Later” option.

     

    That way, we could

    • Snap photos freely without waiting for each one to process.
    • Save battery while out and about.
    • Review and process our favorite shots later (for example, when back home while charging).

     

    It would make the shooting experience so much smoother just capture the moment and enjoy it, without missing anything because of the processing time.

    Adobe Employee
    October 22, 2025
    quote

    I absolutely love the Project Indigo app! It’s such a relief to finally take photos that look naturally beautiful instead of being over-processed like on the stock app.

     

    However the processing time slows down shooting a lot, especially when you’re out and about capturing moments on the go.

     

    Here’s a simple suggestion = if possible please implement a “Process Later” option.

     

    That way, we could

    • Snap photos freely without waiting for each one to process.
    • Save battery while out and about.
    • Review and process our favorite shots later (for example, when back home while charging).

     

    It would make the shooting experience so much smoother just capture the moment and enjoy it, without missing anything because of the processing time.


    By @Deulhadj28109761hqsn

    Thank you for sharing this idea - we are indeed looking into something like this. The sheer amount of data Indigo processes for each shot is really large (in Night mode, up to 32 12MP raw frames), and writing all that data to storage each time a photo is captured also requires time and power, so we need to balance all things out. But there are some exciting user experience possibilities with this approach and we are eager to experiment with them.

    Participating Frequently
    October 22, 2025

    I can only assume processing will be a lot faster with iPhone 17 Pros with 512GB of storage or more. It's been proven that the higher capacity iPhone 17's have faster storage speeds.

    Adobe Employee
    October 21, 2025

    Hi everyone. I wanted to share a brief update regarding iPhone 17-series support in Indigo. We are putting finishing touches on a build which will run on those devices and hope to release it within a few days. This build will not support the front camera on iPhone 17 devices - a new build which includes the front camera will be released once iOS 26.1 is released. Thank you all for your patience.

    oskar27
    Participating Frequently
    October 22, 2025

    I really have appreciated the work Adobe put into starting this project, and I changed my default camera to Project Indigo. But I got the iPhone 17 when it was released, and couldn't wait any longer for the update. I switched to Pro-Cam by Tinkerworks. It's been going very well, but I hope the new Project release will win me back. The unreliability for the app support is a big concern when needing a steady go-to that I know will work as expected. Maybe down the road it will move from "project" status to a permanet fixture in the Adobe family of tools.

    Participating Frequently
    October 22, 2025

    @oskar27 you can always use Halide, or even lightroom mobile raw for your own tuning.

    Participant
    October 20, 2025

    I would like to see an example of how to use Indigo for night astro files. Also since that would require the use of a tripod, how about a 3 or 10 second delay button. I have been playing with it and find it to be supurb. I find the remove reflections to be quite good and the same goes for the zoom features. Night mode in general seems to be great. Hope to see new features as you develope them.

    Adobe Employee
    October 21, 2025
    quote

    I would like to see an example of how to use Indigo for night astro files. Also since that would require the use of a tripod, how about a 3 or 10 second delay button. I have been playing with it and find it to be supurb. I find the remove reflections to be quite good and the same goes for the zoom features. Night mode in general seems to be great. Hope to see new features as you develope them.


    By @svjim

    Capturing astrophotography can be done in several different ways, depending on what you are trying to achieve. If you just keep the camera static on a tripod and capture for a very long time, you'll get nice star (and satellite) trails. But if you want to see individual stars as points, you either need special processing, or you need a tripod with an automated rotating system to match the spin of the Earth. We will introduce a special astrophotography mode in the future which can do these kinds of things for you, but for now, what you can do is to:

    1. Set the timer by swiping left on the histogram area and exposing the ancillary tools; timer is the leftmost one.
    2. Switch to Night mode
    3. Open Pro controls
    4. Open the rightmost Pro control
    5. Select 'Long Exposure' mode
    6. Select the number of frames to capture as 'infinity'
    7. Open the leftmost Pro control (focus)
    8. Set it to what the "typical" infinity focus position is for that lens (e.g., on my device, for 1x lens that is typically 0.82); note that focus position on mobile devices heavily depends on the device temperature and on the device orientation, and there is no "locked" infinity position, so you probably want to let the device warm up a bit before starting to capture, and you may want to experiment with the device beforehand to see if you can derive a better infinity focus position when you point upwards.
    9. Open the second from the left Pro control (exposure) and set exposure time to 1s and ISO to maximum 400 or 500 (but ideally you leave it at minimum).
    10. Press the shutter button and let it capture for a while. Test what kind of results you get with 2-3 min vs 10 min vs longer.
    Participant
    October 23, 2025

    As a long-time astrophotographer, this is great.  I would like to see the ability to focus on a star by having an enlarged subframe or zoomed window, as is done in my mirrorless cameras.  The 3s delay in the beginning is  good to have, but if you are going to set the number of frames equal to infinity, you also need a means to stop the exposures without touching the iPhone, which will destroy pinpoint stars if you are using a tracker, for example.  I have a bluetooth remote control for the iPhone. It shows as ABShutter3 in the Bluetooth device list.  I've verified that it can start the Pi exposure and stop the exposure without touching the iPhone.  Actually, with the bluetooth remote, you don't need the 3s delay.  I understand that you can't depend upon a 3rd party product, but at least it's possible.   I'm curious.  Is the technology available for alignment to align on stars?  Looking forward to this.

    Participant
    October 18, 2025

    After a major recent update, night photos have become simply disgusting. 15 pro max iOS 26.0.1

    Adobe Employee
    October 21, 2025
    quote

    After a major recent update, night photos have become simply disgusting. 15 pro max iOS 26.0.1


    By @ð’ð»ð°ð´ð¸ñð»ð°ð²_5231

    "Disgusting" is a pretty strong word. 🙂 Care to share an example or two, with some notes on how they were captured?

    Adobe Employee
    October 16, 2025

    Hello everyone - thank you for your patience while you wait for the iPhone 17 support. We are working hard on it, and we have run into some issues, especially with the front camera. Some of them we flagged to Apple, who have made a fix and will ship it with iOS 26.1. Sadly, that means we need to consider disabling the front camera in Indigo until that version of iOS is shipped. In the meantime, we have made some improvements with iOS 26 compatibility on all devices. We hope to release an updated version which runs on rear iPhone 17-series cameras in a few days.

    Participating Frequently
    October 16, 2025

    Boris - with the new update, will the front camera be disabled only on iPhone 17, or will that happen on older devices too?

    Adobe Employee
    October 16, 2025
    quote

    Boris - with the new update, will the front camera be disabled only on iPhone 17, or will that happen on older devices too?


    By @Moonboots22

    We are considering it for 17-series only. Other devices seem to work just fine.

    Participating Frequently
    October 14, 2025

    Boris - am I correct in saying that the Night Mode with Merge & Align set to a single frame essentially operates in a way somewhat similar to Halide's popular "Process Zero", but with Project Indigo flavor on the processed JPEG vs. whatever light processing Halide does on the Bayer Raw file?

    Adobe Employee
    October 14, 2025
    quote

    Boris - am I correct in saying that the Night Mode with Merge & Align set to a single frame essentially operates in a way somewhat similar to Halide's popular "Process Zero", but with Project Indigo flavor on the processed JPEG vs. whatever light processing Halide does on the Bayer Raw file?


    By @Moonboots22

    If you manually select to capture only 1 frame, then yes, there will be no "computational raw DNG" - there is only one raw frame captured and stored. We still run our look after that to define the tone and color, as well as sharpening and denoising parameters, and those will be used to generate the JPEG, but the raw will be a pure single-frame raw.

    Participating Frequently
    October 13, 2025

    @BorisTheBlade Hello! I would like to request a feature which i think the team is capable of adding. That is using the aligning and merging algorithm from super res zoom for night modw like in google camera which improved detail and clarity in daylight vs just HDR+ which would be appreciated. Thank you!

    Adobe Employee
    October 13, 2025
    quote

    @BorisTheBlade Hello! I would like to request a feature which i think the team is capable of adding. That is using the aligning and merging algorithm from super res zoom for night modw like in google camera which improved detail and clarity in daylight vs just HDR+ which would be appreciated. Thank you!


    By @powerful_Elixir5E29

    Sorry, I am not sure I understand... can you elaborate?

    Participating Frequently
    October 13, 2025

    Yes. Indigo uses computational stacking to reduce noise like in google camera hdr+ mode. Marc Levoy and the google team have released a paper for night sight and night sight is different from hdr+ in that it uses the google super res zoom align and merge to merge the frames so it offers better resolution compared to hdr+ so using night sight in daylight on pixel devices offered improved detail and resolution vs using hdr+ mode. So if indigo is using similar algorithm to hdr+ which i think it is then can you integrate the super res zoom algorithm align and merge into the night mode to improve image clarity,resolution in daylight when using the night mode?