P: Introducing the Project Indigo camera app

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Here's another night mode auto shot in quite dim lighting. There is only one street light not in frame to the right. It took 1s to proccess and I am extremely impressed at what it does in terms of raw! The shadows can be recovered quite well, if pushed all the way up the dark areas noises both chroma and luma are not blotchy artifacts like previous since it didn't need to drop shutter speed much unlike the other scene. The sooc jpeg did fine in terms of exposure on how it represents the true darkness of that scene, but too much crushing shadows.

The processed jpeg from raw is how I would like night mode to behave vs currently as that look is more zsl instead of psl, which night mode tends to be brighter and have more shadow exposure. I also removed all denoising in light room mobile and left sharpening untouched. This amount of noise if done to sooc jpeg is more than acceptable due to the nature of the scene darkness. Please pass this to the team and see what they think as well in terms of noise to sharpness.

night mode raw: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/i4qoqwj3h2uen0mei6pqm/IMG_0014.dng?rlkey=25rq19knl4at8netsz1y3bnpo&st=tlgpxk67&dl=0

Indigo raw: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/ueva2i4mcbz6nq6vqe49k/IMG_9994.dng?rlkey=sybu0e3vyy1r1zc2p94zalzwz&st=10uwv4py&dl=0

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@BorisTheBlade Last night I took a night mode Indigo raw for the first time just to see how it does handheld. Everything was left on auto upon entering night mode. The result is pretty decent but there are rooms for improvement of course as always. It took 4s animation based on the counter to do it's merge and process. In lightroom mobile, it's quite amazing to push the shadow up about the midpoint of the slider before you get any strange artifacts. Pushing it to almost max gives weird chroma noise/blobs/ whatever you call it in the shadows/black areas. I do not know what is the cause of this or to even call it. But as you see the noise patterns are fine grains elsewhere, which is fine, can the shadows/black areas be this fine grains in the future vs whatever it is now shown? I have attached the crops as well as the raw.

I spoke to you before in regards to having always DCG on for whatever sensor is capable of in the 15 pro series and upwards since the sensor "should" be capable of dual conversion gain. I have attached two example of a extremely hard case shot inside a restaurant with hdr. One shot is taken with DCG enabled raw from google camera 9.6 with my own tuning adjustments for google camera, and one shot is from Indigo raw. All was auto. As you can see the dcg raw from google camera is far better in terms of shadow noise recovery vs the normal raw. Having DCG on always will also aid in the night shot mentioned above as well. Let me know what you think after digressing into these raw samples.

Dcg raw from google camera 9.6 mods: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/vimbaizmsqfetaa8dgtd3/Gcam9.6_DCG.dng?rlkey=3spypsi70zm2sbkwqiti0tzq2&st=j4q4n6dx&dl=0

Indigo Nightmode raw: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/2vio2d1pqb849j28gh95l/IMG_9993.dng?rlkey=yllxxfoscrjkm5qt8kublcv0p&st=0a6yhau1&dl=0

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red0ne

New Participant

I just registered to express my gratitude and support to the team. I’ve been using Indigo since release and while it's understandably still maturing, it shows a lot of promise. They are clearly aiming for something that isn't just a repeat of what Marc's team started at Google. I own iPhones and a variety of Android phones to experiment with computational photography, and it's clear Indigo is forging its own path.

Having said that, I would like to share my view as a developer (albeit of the web kind) on the behavior in this thread. It seems to have turned into both: a wishlist (probably fine) and a list of demands for the team to replicate what other camera apps do, which is particularly appalling when specific solutions are prescribed. The team has repeatedly mentioned they are small, so their budget (time, resources, etc.) is limited. Their time is (probably) best spent improving stability (their stated top priority) and executing on their vision, not reproducing the Google camera or emulating the iPhone's ISP.

I bet the best way to get what we want is by helping the team with feedback about specific, reproducible issues. Indigo appears to be an experiment, and its future isn't guaranteed. It needs to be stable and have an identity of its own, which it won’t achieve by copying what came before. This is just my perspective as a lurker who's genuinely excited to see this project succeed.

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@red0ne Feedbacks are feedbacks, there's no demands here from me nor anyone on this thread as well. You might have own iPhones and androids like me but you definitely do not know the "scene" of camera mobile photography that exists for example on telegram. Everyone modding camera apps started with google camera as the pinnacle of computational photography and Marc and his team is definitely putting a repeat of that for iOS, not a exact port if that's what you're talking about. Also do know that this is after all Marc's bread and butter so he is definitely improving on what he started with, google camera, so if you can't match the level of google camera and then exceed it, why else Indigo would exists. There's a phlethora of camera app out there already with it's own identity that you mentioned of, but came nowhere close to what google camera is capable of.

Most of the stability feedbacks were overheating, not saving photos if exiting the app too early (my own experience), shutter sounds, improper hdr viewing (udpated in latest iOS beta) seems to be already addressed by the team so the next step would be the obvious fine tune adjustments so people who uses jpeg do not have to tinker with the raws as the raw sizes even after post process to jpeg are quite large, 4-5 times the sizes.

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Came across this reddit thread on how Pixel 9 series does zooms @BorisTheBlade : https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1flk1ia/indepth_analysis_of_the_9_pro_camera_at_various/

This was somewhat of what I was trying to ask of Indigo's team regarding to applying SR at various zooms. Please take a look and see if it's even possible for iPhones going forward.

Adobe Employee

Came across this reddit thread on how Pixel 9 series does zooms @BorisTheBlade : https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1flk1ia/indepth_analysis_of_the_9_pro_camera_at_various/

This was somewhat of what I was trying to ask of Indigo's team regarding to applying SR at various zooms. Please take a look and see if it's even possible for iPhones going forward.

By @nhan_8084

We will continue to explore ways to improve zoom quality on Indigo. Since we do not control the HW side of things (unlike Google), we will also need to react to how camera hardware on iPhone develops over time.

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@BorisTheBlade thank you, makes a lot of sense when app needs access to the device hw components. Have adobe imaging team ever considered releasing a phone since the team has VAST knowledge about photography? Speaking from a business aspect, it wouldn't need to be high end costing $800-$1k plus I wouldn't imagine since Adobe can reach out to a ODM, similar to what Nothing is doing, and making a sub $600 phone and the software of Indigo will be vastly more than capable of what many oem are doing. It def won't be Adobe's main source of income for sure, more of like a Indiegogo crowdfund campaign. I'd be definitely up for it!

raw: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/mj9f1or4izxvmbkxd2q73/IMG_9970.dng?rlkey=t7t9kf01gf7wlaq13320uf7a2&st=f1pkmqyz&dl=0

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@BorisTheBlade I took a 5x shot, handheld, as stable with two hands as I could, seems like OIS/EIS is def not as good with the tele as the main. Is it possible to fix?

another note, 5x has a lot of artifacts similar to stock google camera, weird chroma blotching that is due to improper noise models used. If I use a custom noise model profile it fixes it in google camera, but I do not know how to even go about that for Indigo. See attached crops for areas of artifacts.

Adobe Employee

@BorisTheBlade I took a 5x shot, handheld, as stable with two hands as I could, seems like OIS/EIS is def not as good with the tele as the main. Is it possible to fix?

another note, 5x has a lot of artifacts similar to stock google camera, weird chroma blotching that is due to improper noise models used. If I use a custom noise model profile it fixes it in google camera, but I do not know how to even go about that for Indigo. See attached crops for areas of artifacts.

By @nhan_8084

Thank you for sharing. On the stability of the 5x shot, did you use Photo or Night mode? If you used Photo mode then there is no OIS, as that is only available in the Night mode. Furthermore, 3rd parties have no ways to influence the OIS: it works as it works and is not tunable. In either mode EIS is used only for stabilization of the viewfinder, but the processing later "stabilizes" implicitly by using aligning & merging of the frames. We'll keep tuning those algorithms.

Regarding noise, we are updating the noise calibration for all lenses on all supported devices. It's still TBD how much impact that will have on the results.

Overall, note that 5x camera is a much poorer performer than the 1x, which is why Apple is under-the-hood often silently switching from 5x to 1x to improve image quality, for example in low light situations.

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@BorisTheBlade That shot was using non night as it's bright day. Should I use night mode regardless to use the algorithm for align and proper merge? I didn't know those artifacts were caused from improper merge and alignment! As mentioned, those artifacts are fixed by using custom noise model values when I use google camera mod apk version on Pixels and non-pixel devices. Glad to hear noise profiles are being improved upon.

In regard to the 5x switching to the 1x crop, yes all OEM does that unless you force it in pro modes typically since main has faster aperature and bigger sensor. Although I have had good experience with apple's stock camera not switching to main unless it's extremely low lit scene, but then again who uses tele at those scenes!

raw: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/3lmut71cuvpiwul6vugxo/IMG_9812.dng?rlkey=vjij72aqh6z6r0ult1b3fdmd9&st=znhyajn5&dl=0

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@BorisTheBlade Took some very low lighting shot in main and tele. I will attach tele raw, sooc jpeg, and processed raw. It seems like to me hdr isn't very good on both when dealing with led like street lamps and led signs on buildings and cars. Is it possible for the team to work more on this in jpeg and raw?

If you noticed there are some artifacts in the edges in the tele sample I sent, it seems like vignette correction issues? There are noises but the noises are very weird, either vignetting correction issues or noise models issues. Also, the processed jpeg I did in terms of noise reduction to sharpness is how I like sooc jpg to be at.

Participating Frequently

@BorisTheBlade did you and the team had a chance to look at this sample yet?

Adobe Employee

Hello everyone - Project Indigo team would like to thank all who are visiting this forum, sharing their experiences, and helping us work on improving the app. We are aware that it has been a while since the last update. The next release is very much in progress and is scheduled to go live in the next 3 weeks, so stay tuned. We are a small team, but we are working very hard to add improvements to the app. Since Indigo uses a custom image processing pipeline, some improvements may take longer then one would anticipate, since we are not able to just call an Apple API and expose some new functonality: we often have to build it from scratch.

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????????_4983

Participating Frequently

@BorisTheBlade Will this update primarily be bug fixes and performance improvements?

Adobe Employee

@BorisTheBlade Will this update primarily be bug fixes and performance improvements?

By @????????_4983

We are working on adding some user-requested features, such as DNG-only capture. While that sounds easy, in reality it is a bit tricky to do with the right experience. There will also be selfie mirroring, a far easier thing to add. A lot of improvements are under-the-hood as performance and stability are still our number 1 priorities.

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@BorisTheBlade I forgot to mention a bug with Indigo and saw it again last night to remind me. I was using a led headlight last night to do some yard work and used Indigo to shoot some picture. This was late about 11 pm so I used the headlight to see, when Indigo was running it looks like the headlight caused some interference with the app as it was displaying vertical scrolling bands, like refresh rate bands. The bands are also captured in the picture as lines/bands. I noticed that this behavior also happened back in July when I had a magsafe battery bank 5000mAh attached while running Indigo, it showed banding across the viewfinder and also capturing had those bandings.

Adobe Employee

@BorisTheBlade I forgot to mention a bug with Indigo and saw it again last night to remind me. I was using a led headlight last night to do some yard work and used Indigo to shoot some picture. This was late about 11 pm so I used the headlight to see, when Indigo was running it looks like the headlight caused some interference with the app as it was displaying vertical scrolling bands, like refresh rate bands. The bands are also captured in the picture as lines/bands. I noticed that this behavior also happened back in July when I had a magsafe battery bank 5000mAh attached while running Indigo, it showed banding across the viewfinder and also capturing had those bandings.

By @nhan_8084

This is LED banding - depending on the light flicker frequency, it may cause such lines (i.e., bands) to appear in the image. We'll look into how to improve the app in presence of flickering light sources.

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@BorisTheBlade I forgot to mention banding do not happen in stock app on both the magsafe battery nor the LED headlight, but Indigo both occured.

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powerful_Elixir5E29

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@BorisTheBlade Will indigo's future updates support iphone 11,12,13 which are now limited due to their RAM? If not then how does the same algorithm which Marc developed for google - HDR+ work on even low-end android phones?

Adobe Employee

@BorisTheBlade Will indigo's future updates support iphone 11,12,13 which are now limited due to their RAM? If not then how does the same algorithm which Marc developed for google - HDR+ work on even low-end android phones?

By @powerful_Elixir5E29

Indigo requires a lot more memory because we are, for now, more interested in developing and testing cutting edge computational photography than we are in supporting older and older device - it is an experimental app, after all. We can reduce the amount of compute we do if the devices are less powerful and enable them to run Indigo, but that is less important for the time being.

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powerful_Elixir5E29

Participating Frequently

@BorisTheBlade What is your take on this a quad bayer 48mp sensor like on the 16 pro at 2x if you could get the 12mp crop not like right now when apple doesnt allow the full 48mp thus the 2x crop even on 16 pro is limited to 3mp do you think if apple allowed the full 48mp input that if we crop the 48mp quad bayer to 2x and use super res zoom on the 2x crop it would get the same detail as a 12mp bayer at 2x crop because of the lens resolution to resolve detail or the 48mp quad bayer will produce more detailed 2x zoom? Thanks!