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?