P: Introducing the Project Indigo camera app

Report · May 23, 2025

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:

Rikk Flohr: Adobe Photography Org

Report · Sep 04, 2025

Here's another night mode auto shot in quite dim lighting. There is only one street light not in frame to the right. It took 1s to proccess and I am extremely impressed at what it does in terms of raw! The shadows can be recovered quite well, if pushed all the way up the dark areas noises both chroma and luma are not blotchy artifacts like previous since it didn't need to drop shutter speed much unlike the other scene. The sooc jpeg did fine in terms of exposure on how it represents the true darkness of that scene, but too much crushing shadows.

The processed jpeg from raw is how I would like night mode to behave vs currently as that look is more zsl instead of psl, which night mode tends to be brighter and have more shadow exposure. I also removed all denoising in light room mobile and left sharpening untouched. This amount of noise if done to sooc jpeg is more than acceptable due to the nature of the scene darkness. Please pass this to the team and see what they think as well in terms of noise to sharpness.

night mode raw: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/i4qoqwj3h2uen0mei6pqm/IMG_0014.dng?rlkey=25rq19knl4at8netsz1y3bnpo&st...

Report · Sep 05, 2025

Indigo was a very promising camera app until a few days ago when it stopped writing DNG files.

I tried erasing / downloading Indigo again, tried quitting Indigo then shooting RAW with the native Apple app then back to Indigo. Always wait for the little progress circle over the preview to complete before doing anything else. No quick clicks of the shutter. No overheating.

Nothing has restored DNG functionality (while Indigo is obviously set to DNG+JPG).

Indigo 1.0.2 on iPhone 16 pro / iOS 18.6.2 / available 81 GB / no previous photos saved in Photos / iCloud not used for Photos.

It should be obvious that not having access to DNG files has made Indigo rather useless.

Report · Sep 07, 2025

I have been using Indigo from the start and it became my main camera app (mapped it to camera button)

the main differentiator from stock camera app is color rendition wchi feels much more natural, film-like, less flat and processed. The image has much more plasticity!

Attached few recent pictures (all are straight unprocessed jpegs)

p.s. still waiting for pure astophotography mode

Report · Sep 09, 2025

I have been using Indigo from the start and it became my main camera app (mapped it to camera button)

the main differentiator from stock camera app is color rendition wchi feels much more natural, film-like, less flat and processed. The image has much more plasticity!

Attached few recent pictures (all are straight unprocessed jpegs)

p.s. still waiting for pure astophotography mode

By @karen_5438

Thank you for sharing your images - these all look wonderful! Regarding improvements to long exposure functionality, including the astrophotography mode, these are in progress. It will take a few cycles for us to progressively add more, as astrophotography requires custom processing which differs from regular captures. Stay tuned!

Report · Sep 07, 2025

Hi guys,

Loving Project Indigo so far. Thanks for building this! I want to share a minor issue I've experienced with the app.

I’m using a Japanese-model iPhone and a shutter / notification sound is required when taking photos in Japan (or when the device is in Airplane Mode). However, in Project Indigo the shutter sound plays continuously—even when I’m not pressing the shutter button. This constant sound makes it very hard to take photos in public without disturbing others.

Could you please look into this for a fix or workaround? Thank again for building a great app.

Report · Sep 09, 2025

I’m using a Japanese-model iPhone and a shutter / notification sound is required when taking photos in Japan (or when the device is in Airplane Mode). However, in Project Indigo the shutter sound plays continuously—even when I’m not pressing the shutter button. This constant sound makes it very hard to take photos in public without disturbing others.

By @liyuu_8951

Thank you for reaching out. This is a known issue, due to the fact that Indigo's viewfinder always streams raw frames which are used both for our custom auto-exposure algorithm and for our Zero Shutter Lag (ZSL) functionality. We are working with Apple on trying to enable shutter sound disabling world wide. Please stay tuned.

Report · Sep 08, 2025

I love the images from the app, they're amazing. I notice that ewhen i view the images on iphone there is a slight pause then it seems like the lights turn on. What's happening? Can i print the lights on image?

Report · Sep 09, 2025

I love the images from the app, they're amazing. I notice that ewhen i view the images on iphone there is a slight pause then it seems like the lights turn on. What's happening? Can i print the lights on image?

By @carromdc

Hello - I am not sure I understand what you are experiencing with the lights turning on. Would you mind explaining a bit more?

Report · Sep 09, 2025

@BorisTheBlade What happened with the app updates? You said it is coming in the upcoming weeks? Also i hope app performance is greatly improved and heat since this update took almost 3 months.