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: 

[BorisTheBlade]

Found out the answer on the file name - Windows transfer tool uses PTP/MTP transfer protocol, which handles file names in 8+3 format: 8 characters for file name, 3 for extension. So our very long file names (ING_YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS_XXX) get translated to a random string of 8 characters plus the extension.

[francois_2687]

Sorry I'm late. I use a Windows PC and connect my iPhone by USB-C cable.

Regards

[francois_2687]

OK I understand. Windows limitations...

[leed24280355]

I am also getting heating issue on iPhone 14 Pro.

Once a DNG has been imported into Lightroom (Cloud) on my Macbook, if I change the profile, I can no longer go back to the Indigo profile - there isn't an option to reselect it. I

If I use the option to reset all edits on a DNG in my Macbook version of Lightroom (Cloud), I also lose the Indigo profile - it gets changes to 'Adobe Color'. Adaptive Color is available as an option but not Indigo.

[BorisTheBlade]

Hello - thank you for trying Indigo and for your comments. To go back to the Indigo profile in Lightroom, you can click on the 'Browse' button and then go to 'User Profiles'. This is a bit buried and we will work together with the Camera Raw Lightroom teams to expose it better in an update.

[MJDwnc]

Thanks for developing this exciting camera app. We all certainly appreciate the opportunity to use it at this early stage of development!

Feature request: I would like to have the ability to activate the shutter remotely, such as with my Apple Watch. 

Looking forward to seeing how the feature set of this new pro-level app develops!

[derosa42]

I am using an I phone 16 Pro Max.  I have done about 4 shooting session.  Flowers, some macro.  I did just 4-5 shots and got a message the the phone was overheating.  Any thoughts.

[BorisTheBlade]

Thank you for your message and for trying Indigo camera. Overheating is a known issue on some devices and the team is hard at work to minimize the impact of that. Once we have a version of the app which helps mitigate the issues, we will release it to the public and would like to hear back from you to know whether the problems were minimized or resolved.

[karen_5438]

I've been waiting for this app for quite a time mainly because i was tired of waiting for Apple to add proper astrophotography mode!

Please add proper Astrophotography mode (same or better than on Pixel)

[conrad2k]

This is an amazing start. I can't wait to see where this journey takes us.  I am particularly pleased with the macro capabilities, though it seems that the macro function is only able to be turned on when the camera detects the lens is too close for a traditional photo.  If I miss that prompt, it seems that I have to restart the app before the macro prompt is offered again. A dedicated macro button under the 'pro' tools would be a nice touch. Am I missing something?  Thanks for sharing this app, and hopefully you will add M series iPad Pro capabilities soon!

[conrad2k]

When I shared a photo from the indigo app to my iPad via AirDrop,  it would only share the jpg file. To see the DNG on the iPad, I had to open it in LR and export it as a DNG file to the iCloud. Is there no way to directly share the DNG?  

Is the 12MP images limit (regardless of which of the iPhone 16 Pro cameras was used to shoot the image), simply because higher MP images are more computationally intensive?  It would be worth the wait for computation would be worth it on some shots, like landscapes.

[BorisTheBlade]

Hello - thank you for your messages and for trying out Indigo. I'll respond to both messages here:

• There is no way currently to manually start the Macro mode. We will explore ways to expose it explicitly in the future.
• To share DNGs from Indigo, I'd recommend checking the great writeup from Greg Benz here: https://gregbenzphotography.com/photography-reviews/project-indigo-the-best-camera-app-for-smart-pho...
• On 48MP images, the main limitation is that iOS does not provide 3rd party apps acces to 48MP raw data: only 12MP is raw, and 48MP is Apple's ProRaw, will their computational photography and image processing style. We will explore ways for us to offer larger resolution images in the future.

[stunning_enthusiasm16B8]

Is there a way to take a photo in 16:9 format?

Thanks.

[BorisTheBlade]

Aspect ratio support is on our roadmap and will be included in a future version of the app.

[BorisTheBlade]

Aspect ratio support is on our roadmap and will be included in a future version of the app.

[Ducamantova65]

Hi - I've just downloaded Indigo and started to play with it.  I like to take my images in 16x9 format, but can't see how to do this in Indigo. Is it a current feature or will it be included later ?

[BorisTheBlade]

Aspect ratio support is on our roadmap and will be included in a future version of the app.

[Vibrant_Coconut0316]

Ran into an image that seemed to capture properly, but shows up sometimes in the camera roll with a green cast. I've attached a screenshot, but I don't have an easy way to send the DNG. The attachment form rejected it with "dng content type (image/x-adobe-dng) does not match its file extension"

My device is a US market device,  a 16 pro max unlocked purchased directly from apple at launch.

[BorisTheBlade]

Hello - thank you for using Indigo and for reaching out with this issue. Can you try to post a DNG by compressing it to a .zip file first?

Can you tell me which iOS version are you running? Make sure it is not a beta but a release 18.5 version, as the beta has some issues which prevent Indigo from running correctly. Also, it sounds like you got a green cast image on more then one occassion, not just one time: is there some rule or pattern that causes it to happen that you can think of - perhaps it is more common in Night mode than Photo mode, or with certain shutter speed settings? Knowing that can help us a lot in debugging.

[Kurtay_Photography0591]

Down vote from me; the App requires latest IOS 18.5 and I am on 18.3 (don't wish to update due to Apple security cut back in UK). Besides, previously I bought a AppleMacbookPro in 2012, only 6 months later Adobe was not going to work in the newer Apple OS updates. And this new App seemes to conjunctive with Lightroom which sounds to me monopoly continues as before. 

Adobe isn't a company neither I supoort nor I recommend anyone any more. Sensitive issue perhaps but my iPhone already takes very good photographs and I don't wish to computerise my photographs. If needed one can alsways use the ChatGPT to create an image. 

Photography is a subject/hobby/craft made with challenges; take away these take away the fun! As it is Digital cameras took most of the fun from us, let's us stay with some reality at least! 

[Kurtay_Photography0591]

The newest posting should be the first one to show on the list; perhaps Adobe can fix that first ! 

[horseoz]

Looking forward to the Android version 

[nhan_8084]

I noticed that the raw is hdr and lightroom mobile opens hdr as default to be processed and it works fine.  However, if you save as jpeg and shared via facebook messenger, facebook, or telegram it makes the hdr even more hdr-y.  See attachments.  The 8701 and 8702 are processed PI dng to jpg.  The png file is how it looks in telegram and also in this forum's file viewer when sending attachments.  Is there a way to save as sdr but only use hdr when hdr display is used?  Similar to google's ultra HDR which brightens up certain parts as needed when hdr display is used.  That way social media apps do not see exposure lifted to heaven as standard.

[BorisTheBlade]

That is what Indigo is doing - JPEGs are written according to the new ISO standard with the SDR "look" being stored as base, and then HDR "look" being obtained by combaning the base + the HDR gain map. It is up to each piece of the ecosystem to respect the format and render it accordingly or pass it along to others in the ecosystem intact. This should include that if the display is not HDR-capable, only the base SDR portion of the image should be rendered (i.e., without the HDR gain map). Note that the HDR ecosystem is still a bit nascent and will take some more time for all players in the field to equalize and catch up to the defined standard.

[djskinner50]

Dumb question. I just started using the app and can't find the Long Exposure button.

[BorisTheBlade]

Hello - thank you for reaching out. The Long Exposure button can be found as follows: switch to Night mode, open Pro Controls, then click on the last button to the right (5th control), then switch the Merge Method to Long Exposure.

Note that for best results you shoud make sure the device is on a tripod or placed somewhere it can be fully static, as otherwise you will likely end up with a blurry photo.