P: Introducing the Project Indigo camera app

[Rikk Flohr: Photography]

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: 

[nnhuy]

@BorisTheBlade Hello, I posted here a couple months ago asking about dramatically different saturation levels between the SDR and HDR looks, especially in shots with skies and clouds. I wasn't able to provide .DNGs back then, but now here is a shared folder of several different shots in .DNG+.JPG further demonstrating the problem. https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1WFa2mTelBAp9VVWXIg4lVGCOvenyRrUj?usp=sharing

Again, I don't have an opinion on which look is correct. I just do not want there to be drastic changes in image "feel" when switching between SDR and HDR, especially because iOS/MacOS will also freely swap between variants with changing low-power-mode, ambient lighting, etc.

[Capture66]

I switched from a 15 Pro to a 17 Pro and I can confirm that the results are clearly more hit & miss with the 17P. This is about the JPEG output only. WB completely off for no apparent reason (on auto) and a occasional 'over the top' HDR effect. On the 15P Pi's output was more consistant. 

Using Pi for a few weeks now, I'm amazed how stunning the images can look. That said, comparing shots from the Apple app, Pi and the real life scene, it seems that Pi leans towards 'bigger than life' tone and colour rendering. To me the images often look more saturated, vibrant and more contrasty/dramatic than the scene in front of the camera. Gorgeous without question but not necessarily accurate. Or is that just me? (again, this is about the JPEG output)

[nhan_8084]

Thanks for confirming what I have been saying as well on my 17 Pro Max to
let the team knows it’s not just me or personal preference! The more
reports like these, the devs will realize there’s really issue with JPEG
outputs and needs fixing asap!

[Capture66]

Agree, but... we also need to keep in mind that this is indeed a 'project' in public beta. I applaud the Pi team for taking this route. Very unlike Adobe, in a very good way! 

I have shot some images with Pi - with the 15 Pro - that are so good it's hard to believe they're from an iPhone. I think Pi is really (becoming) something special. Low ISO settings with shutterspeeds in (low) light conditions that are like... HOW?!? 🙂

I'm sure the Pi team has a clear goal on how the tone & colour rendering should look. Personally I hope it will not lean towards pretty postcards too much but more towards real life accuracy.  I love the Indigo project! 

[nhan_8084]

Well that's the thing, anything in release phase to public, even say alpha, the team MUST take every single consideration and inputs from us "testers" including phlethoras of samples and go back to the drawing board.  I tune google camera mods for multiple devices so I know all about taking inputs from my users, and I'm a one man show vs the very capable small team that Indigo has.  What's troubling is average consumer still and will always prefer heavy denoising (smearing) over fine grains processing like in the dng when you kill all denoise.  That's why most OEM now uses AI cartoon hallucinations especially at 10x zooms and beyond even with big sensors.  For example, look at the Vivo X300 Pro, and the recently shown Honor Magic 8 Pro samples from gsmarena lol.  Indigo's raw is great, but it's just annoying to have to process EVERY pics, on top of that edit the SDR base so sites like facebook, and telegram has non-hdr viewer to support them or else it will look oversharpened, over shadow lift/haze.

[enthusiastic_critic1623]

I feel the same way you do. ON JPEG, the white balance becomes very strange.

[T__L]

When can we expect the next release? It's been 3 weeks since the last update for the iPhone 17's.

The lack of updates is really off-putting... We understand there's a smaller team working on this app, but how else is the app going to improve without more updates so that we can provide more feedback?

[Capture66]

If you choose the 'problic beta route' and ask for feedback, this should should be both ways imo. A bit more communication would help. ProRaw support and 48P would be on top of my list. Other 3rd party apps offer this too (No Fusion is a very interesting one).

[T__L]

Man, imagine being able to capture 24MP or even 48MP images with this processing.

Indigo is already my go-to for all photos that I want to take; please release the updates already.

[T__L]

Well there it is, update 1.0.6 is out!

[BorisTheBlade]

Well there it is, update 1.0.6 is out!

By @T__L

It is out, though we have a small (and easy to fix) issue that we somehow misplaced the front camera switch button. 😄 A fix for this is coming right away...

[vlk42]

Can we share photos taken with the app?  I got an absolutely phenomenal macro shot of a tiny beetle that rivals anything you can get with a DSLR!

[BorisTheBlade]

Can we share photos taken with the app?  I got an absolutely phenomenal macro shot of a tiny beetle that rivals anything you can get with a DSLR!

By @vlk42

This is an amazing photo! Great job.

[nwhart1]

Currently when I export any image from PI, it exports at 1/4 resolution. This is true no matter if I do a simple "save to photos", click the "lightroom" button from the bottom navigation, etc. I have found no workaround for this issue.

attaching two screenshots, one of photo metadata in PI, and the next what opens in lightroom. in general the file sizes for the PI images are like 10-20% the size of the same shot taken with the built in camera, which might be related? something about how the app handles resolution and file sizes

phone model: iPhone 17 Pro

iOS version: 26.1

app version: 1.0.5

[BorisTheBlade]

Currently when I export any image from PI, it exports at 1/4 resolution. This is true no matter if I do a simple "save to photos", click the "lightroom" button from the bottom navigation, etc. I have found no workaround for this issue.

attaching two screenshots, one of photo metadata in PI, and the next what opens in lightroom. in general the file sizes for the PI images are like 10-20% the size of the same shot taken with the built in camera, which might be related? something about how the app handles resolution and file sizes

phone model: iPhone 17 Pro

iOS version: 26.1

app version: 1.0.5

By @nwhart1

Sorry to hear you are dealing with this problem. What I suspect is happening is that you have BurstSR (multi-image super-resolution) disabled. This is easy to verify in the viewfinder if 2x zoom button does not have an 'SR' badge. If this is the case, then when you use 2x digital zoom this happens:

1. Image sensor is cropped to the center half of the FOV
2. The effective resolution of the raw DNG image is reduced by 4x in pixels (2x horizontally and 2x vertically) to 3MP
3. The JPEG is upscaled back to 12MP via a simple interpolation, NOT the multi-image super-resolution; that is why it is showing 12MP.
4. When you import the image into Lightroom, the DNG get's imported which only has 3MP.

To fix this, go to the app settings (in version 1.0.5 or older swipe left on the histogram then tap on the gear icon; in version 1.0.6 tap on the three dots then on the gear icon) and make sure 'BurstSR' toggle is turned on.

Please let me know if this solves you problem. If not, we'll need to dig deeper. Note that if you capture with Long Exposure option (accessible inside the Night mode Pro controls), then multi-image super-resolution will NOT be active (even if it is enabled in the settings) and when you use digital zoom, you will again end up with a reduced size raw DNG image.

[nhan_8084]

@BorisTheBlade thank you for the update from the team.  I can confirm that the update did indeed fix the very very bad low light photos!  See attached.

I saw the release note said it fixed the tint issue of SR and noisy photos but I think now it is overly denoised!  Also motion artifacts are extremely bad as well.  I cannot send dng file due to privacy of person faces.  I will attach a crop of the dng after imported in lightroom mobile.  Exif said 1/82s iso 100, and I can tell you there was ample of light indoor shot at 2x.

btw the jpeg is exactly as denoised and smearing as the dng!

[BorisTheBlade]

@BorisTheBlade thank you for the update from the team.  I can confirm that the update did indeed fix the very very bad low light photos!  See attached.

I saw the release note said it fixed the tint issue of SR and noisy photos but I think now it is overly denoised!  Also motion artifacts are extremely bad as well.  I cannot send dng file due to privacy of person faces.  I will attach a crop of the dng after imported in lightroom mobile.  Exif said 1/82s iso 100, and I can tell you there was ample of light indoor shot at 2x.

btw the jpeg is exactly as denoised and smearing as the dng!

By @nhan_8084

Hi - thank you for doing the test so quickly. The very bad low-light fix is only the step one. We are waiting for some fixes from Apple (due in iOS 26.2) which will allow us to fix the remaining low-light issues. Testing the beta feels promising.

Regarding your tests, you have contributed by far the most information to our team, and we are very appreciative of your inputs. There is one difficulty however, which is that it is sometimes hard for us to figure out which point is each of the images you are sharing trying to illustrate. To prevent your work going to waste, of us misinterpreting what you are trying to say, I would recommend that you try formatting messages such as the last one in the following way:

• Have a bullet list stating which tests you are sharing with us
  • For each test, try to share as much information as you can.
  • Things like which mode was used, what the illumination was like, did you do any tap to expose, etc. It can be tricky to remember it all, so share as much as you can
• For each test, share which of the attached images illustrates the points you are trying to make.
  • If you can pinpoint where in the image we should be looking, that would help a great deal!
  • Similarly for sharing Lightroom mobile screenshots, having more context may also help - what are we supposed to see in that screenshot.
• Whenever possible, share a DNG (which you have already done).

Cheers.

[nhan_8084]

@BorisTheBlade Sorry, I thought I made it quite clear when referencing the Lightroom Mobile screenshot crops as I mentioned those are shot using 2x SR always enabled, with exif reporting as 1/86s iso 100, plenty of light.  The screenshot crops I sent are all parts that are heavily denoised of one scene, not three separate scenes.  This was taken with normal mode, all auto with no taps unless otherwise stated so moving forward unless I mentioned something, it is all shot in auto normal mode.  

The TVscreenshot is self explainatory showing smearing when motion is shown, like oil pastels, like no proper merging being done instead of ghost motion blur which would be normal.  

The screenshot of the speaker and lamp shade def showed smoothing as the speaker grills not defined at all, and lamp shade has ridges that is blurred out in the middle are between the grow lights and plant shelf, with hdr clipping but that clipping is fine as theres no exposure bracketing yet.

The screenshot of the small christmas tree pot showed no details of the christmas tree, but just heavy denoising as the branches and needle leaves are not visible.

I know you have mentioned over the time on this forum that the team is working on high frequency foliage rendering so I completely understand as it is not mentioned in the release notes.  My job here is simply to take pictures on any releases to point it out to the team to show from my device and shots.  Definitely not as a mean of bashing the team by anyways so make sure this is understood :).

The normal zoom range of 0.5x, 1x, 4x and selfie shot in raw dng is incredible vs stock for sure.  It is just the SR zooms that has issues still when using the newest 17 series, so I figured it is not fixed yet as there are no release notes to mention tuning improvements really.  However, I saw mention of super res merge in this release note so I showed the issues when shot at 2x.