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: 

[acocoadog_8447]

iOS 18.5 (22F5053f)

[BorisTheBlade]

That is a beta build of iOS 18.5, and we have seen some issues like this in beta builds. Can you update to a release build and try again?

[acocoadog_8447]

Yes, it's fixed! I didn't expect it to be so straightforward. Sorry for the time I took up of yours.

[kmilos]

Also, inspecting this DNG w/ exiftool I found a couple of gotchas:

[IFD0] DefaultCropSize : undef undef

AFAIK some parsers will reject these files as non-conformant to DNG/TIFF/Exif spec. Please fix - either remove the tag so default values can be assumed, or fill w/ default ImageWidth, ImageLength.

[IFD0] Model : iPhone 15 Pro

[IFD0] UniqueCameraModel : iPhone16,1 back camera

[XMP-aux] Lens : iPhone 15 Pro back camera 6.765mm f/1.78
[XMP-exifEX] LensModel : iPhone 15 Pro back camera 6.765mm f/1.78

[ExifIFD] LensModel : iPhone 15 Pro back camera 6.765mm f/1.78

I guess UniqueCameraModel should be synced for consistency?

[BorisTheBlade]

Thank you for pointing this out. We will update the way Indigo writes these metadata.

[georgeb73469922]

So grateful. Thank you for carrying on with this brave, wonderfully creative work. Simple tools that help us make beautiful images are a wonderful gift. 

[Kukulcan67]

This app is amazing. The 12MP result is every bit as defined as (but even more "anti aliased" than) the "fake" 48MP on 15 Pro but looks so much better. Displaying the resulting HDRs on iPad Pro 2024 looks just unbelievable.

The advertised "Turn water into silk" seems to suggest the app does long time exposure, but I can't find that feature. Anyway, a great start and I hope more of the probably endless possibilities will be explored in future versions. 

[BorisTheBlade]

Hello - thank you for your comment. We are very happy to hear you are enjoying Project Indigo.

To get the "water into silk" effect, follow these steps:

• Switch to Night mode
• Turn Pro controls on (button on bottom right)
• Open the rightmost Pro control
• Switch the Merge Method to "Long Exposure"

Note that for Long Exposure to produce good results, you should be on a tripod as any camera motion can introduce blur across the field of view. In addition, you may want to adjust the Frames to Merge parameter above the Merge Method and try valuas all the way up to 32. The more frames get merged, the more "silky" the effect will be.

[Kukulcan67]

Thanks. I'd suggest to add at least the merging feature in Photo mode too.

The merging mode is nice but suffers from the same pretty short max. time as the original camera (which gives 3 seconds).

For the future I would love to have up to like 30 seconds or continuous merging, something like a bulb mode. It is great for sea and waterfalls already, but too short for moving clouds.

Not sure if it makes sense, but would some sort of pixel shift writing into an 48 MP buffer increase detail?

Anyway, congrats on your work, just replaced original camera in quick start bar with Pi (as I should learn to use the sidebar for that anyway). Wonder when Apple allows me to pit Pi on side button 😉

[BorisTheBlade]

Thank you for the suggestions. We will look into the UX for the Long Exposure mode to make it easier to access, as it is currently a bit burried.

On pixel-shifting, technically that means moving the sensor precisely by 1 pixel up-down and left-right to increase the detail. To the best of our knowledge, iPhone cameras do not offer such control. Our multi-frame super-resolution technology relies on handshake to introduce pixel motion (albeit not as well controlled as mechanical pixel-shifting), which is why we can recover good detail with 2x digital zoom.

[juhapekka]

Hi. Any plans to support any iPads? Current gen M4 iPad Pro has 8GB ram (at least) but when i tried using Indigo it just says all iPads are not supported due to physical memory constraints, which really shouldn't automatically be the case.

[BorisTheBlade]

Thank you for your message. Supporting iPads is on our TODO list, but it will take extra time to tune the UI and the camera performance, so for the time being we are prioritizing iPhones. 

[nhan_8084]

I noticed PI has a "bug" or "flaw-ish", after taking the picture, you can see the processing indicator working via thumbnail, but if you exit the application the image will not finish processing and will not save!  This does not happen with stock app or third party app like Halide.  On androids, if you exit gcam while processing, it saves fine.  Apple does allow app to run in background memory iirc.  Please make it amongst the priority of things to fix/add because it will be very frustraiting to lose shots.

[BorisTheBlade]

Hello - thank you for your message. Current behavior is as follows:

• If Indigo is paused while "regular" images are being processed (images without the multi-frame super-resolution) then processing will continue once the app is started again.
• If however the app is paused while SR images are being processed, it is likely that the captures might be lost. That is why we show a tip the first time a user captures an SR image to warn of this behavior and recommend not pausing the app.
• Finally, if the app is not just paused, but killed (the OS may kill the app if another app is launched that needs a lot of resources), then shots are likely to be lost in either case.

iOS and Android differ greately in how they handle background tasks. Similarly, Halide and Indigo differ greately in how they process images: Halide uses built-in iOS image processing while Indigo's processing is fully custom. Those differences make it challenging to do processing while the app is paused. We are always looking into preventing crashes and lost shots, so this issue is at the top of our priority list.

[nhan_8084]

Sorry to clarify, the shot I was referring to wasn't super res shot for zoom but a normal shot.  I noticed on all occasions I exit the app after shooting, but went back in like immediately after and also tried 1 minute or so after the shot, it still did not resume.  But instead the thumbnail shows whatever previous pic taken and saved.  Please double check this on the team's end.  I do not have any heavy tasks also running in the background as well, facebook, facebook messenger, telegram, youtube, safari, chrome browser, telegram is about it.  Thank you as always to the prompt reply!

[slyfox8900]

Thank you for finally releasing this! I'm and avid Pixel camera fan and when I learned Mark Levoy was working on a "manual professional mobil app for all" I was thrilled. I don't have an iPHone unfortunatley but I do have a concern regarding the approach from adobe on this app. 

Are their plans to make this a subscription based app for iphone and android? I personally hope not. I would pay a flat fee to buy a license to the app but as a photographer, a mobile photographer, I don't like the thought of having to pay monthy/yearly fees to get the best quality images from my phone. 

What is adobe's thoughts or plans for pricing of this app? 

I think for AI based features like the reflection removal for example, make these things available via subscriptions or in app purchases for one time fees. You want to appeal to a wider audience and I would def pay upwards of $20 for this app. It looks great guys! Good work! Can't wait to try this on my Pixel 9 pro someday. 

[RolandIEmbraceTheBlur]

I would love it if in the future this app supported LUTs (.cube files) like the Pearla app does! I love this app so far! But LUTs would make it super fun for me :-). But maybe nobody else cares about LUTs 🙂 ?!? I don't post process I just shoot in JPEG with LUTs because I find the whole post processing workflow slow and cumbersome for not much benefit for hobbyists like myself who don't get paid $ for photos!

[RolandIEmbraceTheBlur]

I used Lightroom on the desktop for 10 years so I have done post processing. But I got frustrated with the whoie SD card dance. The cloud sync dance is no better. I'd love it if this app would do limited post processing in the future. Basically my ideal workflow is (I don't do video): 1. shoot with a LUT 2. 10% of the time do some light post processing but just basic contrast, vibrance etc, no cropping nothing major 3. post to flickr 

[BorisTheBlade]

Hi Roland - thank you for reaching out and your comments. Under the hood, Indigo uses LUTs to create the "look" that results in the JPEG processed image. These LUTs are also stored in the DNG and used to render it when opened in Lightroom (but since DNG is raw, the LUTs can be ignored, of course). Regarding how you would want to control the LUTs, can you elaborate a bit more on which exact LUTs you are talking about (e.g., tone, color, etc.), how would you edit them, how would you want the camera to apply them for you? Thanks.

[RolandIEmbraceTheBlur]

Thanks Boris for the reply! You are doing some amazing outreach here! Love it!

I don't do Desktop photo editing or Lightroom or shoot RAW. JPEG only. RAW is too slow and cumbersome for me #Ymmv 🙂 obviously most people in this thread like RAW and DNG and post processing I'm weird 🙂 I realize!

I don't like post processing (I used Lightroom for 10 years starting with 1.0 and at the end found it too slow for too little benefit) I only edit 10% of my photos if that on my phone. The rest I post straight to flickr.

You wrote:

>Regarding how you would want to control the LUTs, can you elaborate a bit more on

>a )which exact LUTs you are talking about (e.g., tone, color, etc.)

>b) , how would you edit them,

>c) how would you want the camera to apply them for you? Thanks.

a) I love the following LUTs (.cube files) and use them with the Pearla iOS Camera app which allows you to load in LUTs and take photos with them in real time (and videos but I don't do video 🙂 !)

•  New Lut Update – PictureFX Leica Barnack – based on Leica type II & III 35mm film camera (sadly does...
• Arklight 14/B LUT Pack – The Matrix Look with Great Skintones by Nick Driftwood
• The varicam LUTs for the Panasonic Cinema and Still cameras like the S9 (I want the S9 because it has a LUT button)
• at least a dozen more that I'm too lazy to mention 🙂 There are 1000s of .cube files on the internet fun for the whole family 🙂 And many film simulation LUTs like the RawTherapee Film Simulation Collection

b) no editing 90% of the time, 10% of the time i use things like Snapseed, Lightroom Mobile on iOS (iPhone not iPad), RAWPower because it supports LUTs with JPEGs not because I shoot in RAW or DNG. I shoot only in JPEG

c) I would like the camera to apply the LUTs in real time as I am taking the photo and bake the LUT into the JPEG (For 8 millionth time I don't care about and I don't shoot RAWs or DNGS :-))

Cheers! ...Roland

[Peter25703978vxk9]

is there a way to disable the HDR mode for captured jpegs ?

[BorisTheBlade]

is there a way to disable the HDR mode for captured jpegs ?

By @Peter25703978vxk9

Hi Peter - there is no way to disable HDR for JPEGs. But the SDR-look is in each JPEG because they are written as base (SDR) + gain map (HDR), per the ISO standard. The ecosystem is sitll being worked on, but more and more tools are properly supporting displaying SDR and HDR correctly, depending on whether the display used for viewing can support HDR or not. 

Out of curiosity, can you tell me what is the use-case for SDR-only JPEGs?

[gregbenz]

@Peter25703978vxk9 Are you thinking of the old HDR (tone mapping)? There are multiple different kinds of "HDR" and you might be thinking of something other than what this app does. The HDR here is a new display technology which includes a gain map in the JPG, which means that the image is closer to real life (without it, tonal range is significantly compressed - and is the reason we so often say things like "the picture doesn't do it justice, you had to be there").

The HDR involved here would not affect the RAW (DNG), as you can always process with HDR on or off. It would just be included in the JPG and only show where supported. You could simply re-export the JPG without retaining HDR to get an SDR (standard dynamic range) result, though of course you're adding work and I would recommend using RAW where possible for best results.

[buggleston]

I've identified a bug on my iPhone 16 Pro. When taking photos using 10x SR zoom in night mode, the saved photo is offset from what was shown in the viewfinder. The two attached photos were taken back to back with the same framing, with the lamp centered in the finder. The second photo using night mode is notably off center.

 

[BorisTheBlade]

Thank you for your message and for sharing your experience. The issue you found is due to the Optical Image Stabilization (OIS), which physically moves the lens to keep the frame stable in presence of handshake. While the viewfinder is running we stream raw frames for ZSL capture, and those frames do not use OIS. That's why the viewfinder and final capture FOVs match. But for Night mode the capture does use OIS with the shifted lens position, while the viewfinder still does not, hence the FOV difference. We will explore options to mitigate this problem in the future.