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

P: Introducing the Project Indigo camera app

  • May 23, 2025
  • 368 replies
  • 236316 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 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. 

 

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: 

 

      This topic has been closed for replies.

      368 replies

      Blueflame09
      Blueflame09
      Participant
      March 8, 2026

      I used the indigo app on my 16 pro. very much impressed. recently changed to android. I’m really waiting for the android release of your app. Is there any tentative release date?

      sam_c_om_
      sam_c_om_
      Participant
      March 5, 2026

      Dear Project Indigo Team,

      I’m writing to you as a huge fan of Project Indigo. I’m deeply impressed by the work you’ve done with computational photography; the way the app handles image processing and sensor data is truly top-tier and has become essential for my mobile photography workflow.

      I’m reaching out with a specific feature request that would be a significant quality-of-life improvement for users who treat their iPhones as serious imaging tools. I frequently use high-quality external lenses (such as anamorphic or telephoto glass) mounted on my phone to expand its technical capabilities.

      Because of the optical design of these external lenses, the image projected onto the sensor is often inverted. Currently, this makes it very difficult to utilize Project Indigo’s computational features in real-time, as both the preview and the final processed output are flipped.

      The Request: Could you add a toggle to flip or invert the image (Horizontal/Vertical) within the app?

      As an app dedicated to the technical excellence of computational photography, providing a way to correct for external optics would be a massive asset for the enthusiast community. It would allow us to compose and leverage your processing power natively without the need for destructive transformations in post-production.

      Thank you for your dedication to pushing the boundaries of what mobile sensors can do. I look forward to the future of the app!

      N
      nhan_8084
      Participating Frequently
      March 5, 2026

      you can easily flip or invert these in light room mobile, or any editing app I assumed?  I’ve done it before in lrm.

      sam_c_om_
      sam_c_om_
      Participant
      March 5, 2026

      yes sherlock , i am absolutely aware of the fact that i can easily flip them . but if you ever actually touched a camera in your entire life , which it seems you haven’t ,  you would be aware that how practically impossible it is to click a photo when the preview is inverted . 

      K
      kathys8031374
      Participant
      March 2, 2026

      Hey there, user of Project Indigo since launch.

       

      Some issues I’ve noticed on my 17 Pro Max vs Indigo on my 15 Pro Max:

       

      image quality seems to have degraded quite a bit, I often have lots of color noise, green splotchiness in shaded areas and issues focusing even on high contrast subjects (a raven against a bright background for instance). 
       

      also, vs my 15 pro max, telephoto quality is significantly reduced.  Even at 10x on my 15 pro max, which produced beautiful, low noise, high fidelity results even for small text in the distance, the 8x option for 17 pro max has blurry details, much higher noise and generally unacceptable quality vs the built in camera app when shooting raw.  This is a stark difference vs the 15 pro max, where Indigo produced much better results than the camera app.

       

      The framing of my photos changes now after I’ve pressed the shutter button, to me this signifies that the shutter is not actually being triggered at the time of user input, this is my most high priority request right now in addition to photos sometimes not actually saving after being captured.

       

       

      N
      nhan_8084
      Participating Frequently
      March 3, 2026

      they are in the process of updating the algorithm for jpeg output.  Hopefully they can fix the tele as well!  ​@BorisTheBlade can you update us on the progress and what have been done so far?

      jinsetnand
      jinsetnand
      Participant
      February 27, 2026

      My Project Indigo app is not working on my iOS 26.3. The app immediately crashes when I try to open it. I’ve already tried restarting my device and reinstalling the app, but the issue persists. Is there a known fix for this? 😭🥺

      N
      nhan_8084
      Participating Frequently
      February 27, 2026

      what iPhone do you have?  It only works on the listed iPhone they mentioned.

      jinsetnand
      jinsetnand
      Participant
      February 27, 2026

      what iPhone do you have?  It only works on the listed iPhone they mentioned.

      iPhone 14

      T
      T__L
      Participating Frequently
      February 20, 2026

      I know we all ask for updates all the time but I just wanted to say keep up the amazing work with this app.

       

      Just looking forward to the next update and improvements once it drops 🙌

        dsj123
        dsj123
        Participant
        February 19, 2026

        Does Adobe have plans to implement the zoom function of the iPhone Camera Control button?

        N
        nhan_8084
        Participating Frequently
        February 19, 2026

        people barely use the camera control button as is, apple is removing that pressured function due to lack of use and going to software haptic I believe.  Don’t think it’s beneficial for the team at Indigo to even have this as their to-do list.

          cr0n1c
          cr0n1c
          Participant
          February 18, 2026

          I utilize Project Indigo for wildlife photography and it’s great! I did notice a few times that the app would freeze briefly when I first started using it. That was on iOS 18. After the upgrade to iOS 26 I noticed that the frequency of the apps freezing on me increased quite a bit. It could just be me though. Anyone else experiencing this? I’m on an iPhone 16 Pro. 

          N
          nhan_8084
          Participating Frequently
          February 19, 2026

          ​@cr0n1c on my 17 pro max I never experience a freeze, however, there is quite a delay when opening the app even if you open it already and it being retained in memory background.  This delay is about 1 second and it’s quite annoying.  ​@BorisTheBlade could the team look into this and have it to have no delay like stock camera app?  

           

          I also notice, maybe 3 out of 5 shots, not back to back shutter spam of course, meaning after the shutter pressed and final image is produced, there is a significant delay in processing from main lens more than any other lens!  By significant, I am talking about 20s plus from shutter pressed to finalized jpeg (thumbnail stop circling).

          N
          nhan_8084
          Participating Frequently
          February 24, 2026

          Also ​@BorisTheBlade here for the delay issue.

          N
          nhan_8084
          Participating Frequently
          February 11, 2026

          iOS 26.3 just got released, was there anything from here that is helpful to the team in terms of camera that wasn’t publicly disclosed by Apple?

          B
          Adobe Employee
          BorisTheBlade
          Adobe Employee
          February 19, 2026

          I am not sure, to be honest. We’ll take a look, but generally speaking, given custom processing and architecture implemented in Indigo, adding new iOS capabilities is not always easy, even if it may be for normal camera apps. iOS 26 already incorporated the background execution APIs but we weren’t able to include them yet, for example. But we are moving forward on various improvements in the app, it just takes a bit of time.

            N
            nhan_8084
            Participating Frequently
            February 10, 2026

            @BorisTheBlade Came across an article here: https://petapixel.com/2026/02/09/the-om-system-om-3-astro-makes-nebulae-look-incredible/.  They mentioned having a 50mp file by stacking 12 handheld shots together.  From my experience with image stacking, they are usually overlayed and re-aligned and merged (with x amount of frames discarded for being blurry below set percent of sharpness of base frame) for noise reduction mainly.  Google has stacked frame, as well as Indigo for SuperRes zooms that is also stacking and using nearby pixel as you have mentioned before.  

             

            Could you explain on how stacking can be used for “full res” 48mp versus the stacking for SR and non-sr MFNR?

            N
            nhan_8084
            Participating Frequently
            February 24, 2026

            ​@BorisTheBlade tagging you again to reply

            B
            Adobe Employee
            BorisTheBlade
            Adobe Employee
            February 24, 2026

            Some explanations on this are already on the Indigo blog (https://research.adobe.com/articles/indigo/indigo.html), and in Google’s post back from the Pixel 3 times (for which they also published a research paper in 2019; https://research.google/blog/see-better-and-further-with-super-res-zoom-on-the-pixel-3/). Essentially, the idea is that sometimes the resolution which can be provided by the camera lens can be higher than what is recorded by the sensor. In that case, if you have minor camera motion, you can recover that optical resolution by multi-frame stacking and using the differences from different frames to “infill” the missing higher-res information. Regular non-SR stacking is simply using averaging to remove (some of) the noise by the square root principle: the noise drops as the square root of the number of samples. So with 9 samples you get ~3x less noise.

            In both cases, there is an assumption of a fixed scene. If there is motion in the scene then you cannot always find a correlation between different frames in the captured burst, so your number of samples drops. Say that you want to denoise and you capture 9 images. Most of the scene is fully static, so in those portions you get a perfect ~3x reduction in noise. But there is an object moving non-rigidly (e.g., a ballerina spinning). That ballerina, and the background near her, will only have maybe 1-2 samples per pixel, so your noise reduction is minimal. The same is true for super-resolution: you will be missing the samples for the same object in the scene needed to recover its resolution. For denoising, the best approach is probably to have so-called spatially-varying denoisers which denoise more in areas where fewer samples were merged. For super-resolution the only “solution” would be to hallucinate the missing details with GenAI, but then there are no guarantees that the new detail will in fact correspond to reality.

            N
            nhan_8084
            Participating Frequently
            February 5, 2026

            Came across this Leica Lux App, and they have a option to vote for the next release in their app and I think it’s absolutely amazing they do this.  Could we have this somewhere in the menu of Indigo, and several choices of what has been requested here so far, plus Indigo’s own team WIP so Indigo users who are not active on this forum votes on the app?  ​@BorisTheBlade 

             

             

            B
            Adobe Employee
            BorisTheBlade
            Adobe Employee
            February 9, 2026

            Hi ​@nhan_8084 - this does sound great. However, this is exactly the kind of a feature that the Indigo team is not going to be able to prioritize for the time being: as mentioned before, computational photography, image quality, and app stability are our priorities. As you know from your testing, there is work to be done to improve on all 3. Indigo already has a questionnaire, accessible from the settings, where users can vote on their favorite features (which helps us understand what is most useful to our users), as well as a few proposed features they would wish to see implemented. There is also a free form field where any suggestion can be added. We have tools for analysis of the feedback and feature requests are extracted and categorized.

            N
            nhan_8084
            Participating Frequently
            February 9, 2026

            Hello, is it the feedback section?  I have filled that out already, and I think it was that survey that mentioned being a beta tester but I haven’t seen anything official yet or being reached out to become one.

            Show more replies
            Terms & ConditionsAccessibility statement
            Using the community Terms of use Privacy Cookie preferences Do not sell or share my personal information ad choicesAdChoices