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: 

[mopperle]

We will be looking into DNG-only saving path in a future update, which will help simplify the workflow.

By @BorisTheBlade

This is a must have!

[jrsforums]

I have found that using the iPhone 'Lightroom' app works great for uploading to my desktop Lightroom Classic system.  I import from the device 'Photos' and can select which ones I want and do this in batch.  I think only the DNG gets transferred....but that is the one I want anyway.  I only need the jpeg if I want to send to someone immediately from the 'Photos' app.

[Enlightened_fan0626]

I'm enjoying testing it on my iPhone 14 and can't wait to see how it responds on my Samsung S25. What's the rough timeline for the Android release date?

[BorisTheBlade]

Hello - thank you for you interest in Indigo and your feeedback. Indigo is a very complex piece of software so it will take some time (and testing/debugging) before it is ready to release on Android. In the meantime, we will continue optimizing the quality, speed, and the UI of the iPhone app.

[RakeyTatey]

Hi everyone, incredible app. Really enjoying it so far, some of the images this thing can produce are truly stunning! 

Do you have plans to introduce a portrait mode and some kind of eye/face autofocus? 

Thank you 

[BorisTheBlade]

Hello - thank you for trying Indigo and for reaching out. We have a very rich wishlist for future Indigo versions, both internal and features we heard about from our users. We will make sure to add items you inquired about on it as well.

[leed24280355]

Once a DNG has been imported into LR, I see that it has the 'Indigo' profile. If, at any stage, I use the 'Reset Edits' option, the profile changes to 'Adobe Color' and there is no option to reselect the 'Indigo' profile.  This is true if I use the 'Reset Edits' option immediately before I have made any other changes. If I then use the 'Edit/Reset Edits' option, I can get the Indigo profile back.

Lee

[BorisTheBlade]

Hello - thank you for trying Indigo and for your comments. To get the Indigo profile back, you can open the profiles browser and go to 'User profiles'. There you should see Indigo. We will work with Camera Raw and Lightroom teams to expose Indigo in a less hidden fashion.

[leed24280355]

Thanks for the reply. In my desktop version of LR I do not see 'User profiles' but I do see 'Indigo Embedded Camera Profile' under 'Profiles'. If I select that, the image gets rendered as very low contrast and there is no slider appearing for it.

[BorisTheBlade]

You are correct - I confused it with Camera Raw. We'll work with the Lightroom team to improve this part of the workflow. Thank you for pointing it out.

[Joey_26_]

Hi! I want to mention there's a similar issue on Lightroom mobile on iOS. The imported profile is "Indigo" with a slider, but if I change it, the only way to go back to that profile is to reset "to import" and then the "Indigo" profile comes back with the slider available. And the "indigo embedded" profile has the same issue the other user mentioned. Very washed out and low contrast with no slider available.

Thank you!

[lucellent]

I've been waiting for such an app for YEARS... but why iOS 18.5? I got immediately disappointed 😕

I'm on iOS 17.7 and wish you'd support the previous OS too, very odd choice.

[BorisTheBlade]

Hello - thank you for reaching out and your interest in Indigo. iOS 18.x series have some APIs for the camera that Indigo relies upon and could not be shipped to the public without. Oftentimes such APIs do not get ported to older iOS versions and we cannot offer support for them.

[dippyshere_]

Thank you, but 18.5 specifically? I can't find any relevant APIs that were introduced in later versions of iOS 18... Can this minimum version be lowered to a lower iOS 18 version in the future? I am unable to update past iOS 18.1 db4 (22B5045g) due to db5+ removing features I need, but am very keen to try out Indigo

[PaulCD-1]

Kudos to Adobe for building this and letting us play with it for free.  
First impressions: this app makes my iPhone 15 Pro run hot! and it tears through battery pretty quickly.  In terms of results: i find that it's still applying a lot of local contrast (clarity) and this can give some slightly odd effects on people's faces - i ended up using a radial mask with negative clarity in Lightroom.  I like that there's a lot less sharpening, but Apple's own proraw files aren't too bad in this regard either.  
i took a low-ish light level picture in night mode at 6x zoom and was pleasantly surprised how good a job it did.  The capture time was long but that's a trade off I'm happy to make. 
In better light levels I'm not so sure it offered me much benefit over proraw DNGs.  
I think this will offer the most benefit when it rolls out on Android, because Pixel phones aside there are some really poor stock camera apps out there.  I would've loved to have had this on my old Huawei phone, for example. 

[dschutz11]

Thanks for this info and what so far has been a great app. One question. I have my photo capture set to JPEG and DNG. But when I take a photo only one file, the JPEG, is shown in the filmstrip. How do I see both files? Thanks!!

[mopperle]

Adobe made this extremly uncomfortable. What you can do transfer it to a PC/mac:

- when you have LR installed oin your iPhone, you can see it and make some edits there and it will be synced there (Inlcuding LrC, if sync is turned on)

connect it via USB (or Airdrop on MAc) and you will see both files jpg and dng.

Now idea, why Adobe has choosen this annoying way. I'm using another app, called ProCamera, which makes such thing much easier and directly writes a visible dng file.

I good guide to this app is this site:
https://gregbenzphotography.com/photography-reviews/project-indigo-the-best-camera-app-for-smart-pho...

Alsthough I would nt call it "best camera app" in its current state. 😉

[BorisTheBlade]

Hello - thank you for trying Indigo and for your comments. A major reason for bundling a JPEG and a DNG together was that many editors, most importantly Apple Photos, do not read and apply raw data rendering instructions that are provided via DNG metadata. This makes the DNG look very poor when viewed in those apps. Since mobile camera captures are primarily viewed an edited on the phone, we aimed to ensure good rendering quality when Indigo images are viewed on device. We are looking into DNG-only capture and how to bridge the rendering quality gap, and hope to have a good overall solution in a future release.

[BorisTheBlade]

Hello - thank you for trying Indigo and for reaching out. We store both JPEG and DNG assets such that Apple Photos can show the JPEG with all of our post-processing (i.e., a finished image). To see the DNG itself the easiest way is to open it in Lightroom mobile app by clicking on the 'Lr' icon in the filmstrip: that sends the DNG to Lightroom for editing. Note that when you open a DNG in Lightroom it will basically look identical to the JPEG. That is because we place metadata in the DNG to instruct image viewers on how the DNG should be rendered. The raw data of course remains intact, and you can override all rendering instructions in the editor. 

[ianw87960015]

Thanks Rikk,

Great app. 

The iPhone 15+ seems to overheat when using the app though.

[BorisTheBlade]

Hello - thank you for trying Indigo and for providing feedback. We are aware of the reports with users' devices overheating when running Indigo and are working on ways to mitigate that and related issues. We will be releasing an updated version of the app which should help with this situation and are looking forward to hearing from you whether it has indeed improved your experience when using the app.

[jesus_3123]

It's experiencing a glitch, at least on the 16 Plus. When you open the Indigo app, it starts making a constant noise as if it's taking a lot of photos at once. The sound doesn't stop and appears every time you open the app.
This should be fixed.

[BorisTheBlade]

Hello - thank you for trying out Indigo and for your feedback. Presumably you are testing the app in South Korea or Japan? In those two locations, iOS issues a shutter sound any time a raw frame is requested, which Indigo does all the time in the viewfinder (that's how Zero Shutter Lag feature is offered). We are working with Apple on finding a solution for this.

[JakeInJP]

Tried to use the app, but the shutter sound plays constantly and it makes it unusable. Suspect this is due to being based in Japan, where the shutter sound can't be switched off. Is there an issue logged for this, and plans to address it?

[JakeInJP]

Just saw the post above, sorry missed it when I first posted. Hopefully the fix comes soon so the 70m+ iPhone users in these markets can use this app...