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: 

[nhan_8084]

I just tried to edit a indigo photo using apple photos on my 17 pro max iOS 26.1 and it edit fine but I think it's only chosing the jpeg.  If you edit the raws using apple photos you want it to look "washed out" because raws are digital negatives, which is washed out look without any luts or processing applied.  I mentioned this as well that in lightroom mobile, after importing dng of Indigo it will apply the "preset" that the time assigned to that shot dng.  To remove all of it, you have to hit reset on top and chose All.  This will give you a pure dng shot by the sensor so you can edit yourself.

[Pratyush Poddar]

It would be great if the default auto mode had an expsoure adjustment slider. I want to take a quick snap, but want to adjust the exposure a bit, but for that I have to go to the pro mode where I need to worry about all the other settings to get the perfect image. A simple exposure slider like the native camera app would be a huge benefit here.

[nhan_8084]

you can still leave the other settings to auto in pro mode and just mess with the exposure sliders.  Most oem do put exposure slider on the main UI once you tap the screen so maybe Indigo can implement this in the future.

[nhan_8084]

@BorisTheBlade I was at the mall to test some more shots, mall is great bc of constant motions, hdr scenes, contrasting lights and shadows.  The following is shot at 2x SR, and 8x SR all auto, no night mode or anything changed.  The african american lady shot is 2x, the caucasian  american lady is 8x.  Both exif is included.  You can see that every single time motion is involved, artifacts appears, and can see by the edges where incorrect merge happens.  Id say the ss and iso is decent to not count it as low light as there are phlethoras of lights in mall settings which I am sure you are aware of.

With iOS 26.2 slated to release next week, I will try again all these scenes or close to it as possible to see if anything improved.

[enthusiastic_critic1623]

agree

[nhan_8084]

@BorisTheBlade I took some more outdoor scene today, it is cloudy but not grey clouds as you can see skies are blue.  I will attach 1x raw process vs jpeg to show the extreme noise reduction seen in jpeg vs raw processed killing noise and sharpening, but keep color noise default.  Everything shown is default photo mode, all auto.

I have also attached 1,2,4,8x and another 8x showing motion where it completely crapped out vs no motion detected in frame.