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: 

[powerful_Elixir5E29]

@BorisTheBlade My main consern is detail in regions with moving subjects in daylight of the potential new 48mp mode of indigo which would use the full sensor 12mp burst to align merge to 48mp final. Can it ever be as good at resolving as much detail as apple pro raw 48mp dng does even when there are moving subjects? Is a quad bayer better for haning moving subjects because when the algorithm fails to align and merge in these regions it falls back to a single frame demosaicking and does a single quad bayer demosaicked frame have more details than a single 12mp bayer frame? If so then super res zoom cant be qualified as equivalent to a dedicated 2x tele lens.

[nhan_8084]

Full res usually requires quite insane amount of light, and NOT meant to be used for motion in frame.  Even pixels gcam full res advises you to not use full res while there are motions since it is stacking frames, while blurry frames are discarded, the sheer power needed and stacking will always have psl (positive shutter lag).  You can however shoot single frame in pure bright condition using full resolution and motion in frames will be fine.

[nhan_8084]

Took some shots after sunset using SR 8x vs stock.  This lighting condition to me is the point that the tele should not be used in either apps.  Stock does bad in normal mode, Indigo is just as bad just less noise but different artifacts.  However, stock night mode (2s) auto took it to a whole dif level while Indigo night mode regressed as well taking longer (6s)!  All shots are tapped on the radio tower blade portion, or whatever you call them.

Sending these to the team to analyze various merge artifacts, smearing, over denoise, and other issues at different lighting conditions and angles.

[nhan_8084]

This set is daylight using 4x and 8x SR motion in frame.  The 4x is much better than 8x SR, you can see artifacts in the SR as before.  The 4x sooc jpeg has a lot of denoising and oversharpening, the 8x is even worse.

I took the 4x dng, killed sharpening and all denoising in lrm, and it is much better and very organic looking so this look should be made the default jpeg processing when it comes to bright lighting for the tele (as well as all lenses tbh!)

[powerful_Elixir5E29]

On my iphone 14 at 2x sr the photos turn out woth these wormy textures looking denoised and soft even in daylight and not properly aligned and have these artifacts with subject motion in the scene. Are you sure the 4x shots are with sr turned on? If so then why does it handle them in a much better different way without artifacts unlike the 8x? Also on the pixel can you shoot a single frame dng at its max resolution and in daylight sunlight with motion and upload it here?

[nhan_8084]

I am using 17 pro max as mentioned before, and yes I am sure SR is on.  For gcam, you cannot do single frame at all, the lowest I can force it to do is 3 frames plus 3 shashta frames so 6 frames on version 9.6.  Version 10.x has not been modified yet but it should be the same.