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 took a selfie and looked at the exif of Indigo vs stock, both jpeg, and Indigo's 23mm vs stock 20mm at the widest.  Is there a reason why Indigo crops into selfie since Apple's whole new square sensor is about wider fov and being able to do horizontal selfies without rotating the phone?  The image quality of Indigo's selfie jpeg is EXCELLENT vs the stock output that is noisy and oversharpened.  I am very satisfied with the way that the selfie has done on this new sensor, it's a tad soft, but I'm not sure because of the denoising, but if the team can dial that denoising down 25% it should be literally perfect.  I havent test any HDR on selfies yet so I will report that later.

[BorisTheBlade]

On iPhone 17-series there are two front cameras declared by the system: wide and ultra-wide. Just like with the rear cameras, iPhone natively runs the "Fusion camera" processing where all declared cameras run at all times and can seamlessly switch. We cannot do that, so we need to bring up this ultra-wide camera separately, tune it, as well as add UX for it. We will do that, but our priority was to enable the default selfie camera experience.

[nhan_8084]

@BorisTheBlade maybe I am misunderstanding your reply.  Typically seamless switching means no camera restart (ie... screen flash to black then image appears).  Those are typically known as logical lenses like stock rear behavior.  What I am asking is: for stock the widest is 20mm per exif and Indigo's widest is 23mm (hence I mention crop).  Apple then also can crop in more to have the center stage look, and at that point Indigo also crops more than apple's center stage, and viewfinder shows 1.5x.  Hope that clarifies things as I understood Indigo's 1x is the widest to match stock.  If not then you meaning the "ultrawide" portion isn't enabled by the team yet to be that widest at 20mm.

[BorisTheBlade]

@BorisTheBlade maybe I am misunderstanding your reply.  Typically seamless switching means no camera restart (ie... screen flash to black then image appears).  Those are typically known as logical lenses like stock rear behavior.  What I am asking is: for stock the widest is 20mm per exif and Indigo's widest is 23mm (hence I mention crop).  Apple then also can crop in more to have the center stage look, and at that point Indigo also crops more than apple's center stage, and viewfinder shows 1.5x.  Hope that clarifies things as I understood Indigo's 1x is the widest to match stock.  If not then you meaning the "ultrawide" portion isn't enabled by the team yet to be that widest at 20mm.

By @nhan_8084

On iPhone 17, the "Ultra-wide" camera is presented in iOS as if it was a separate camera module, NOT as just a mode for the front camera to seamlessly switch to. So, in practice, it works the same as the rear cameras: if we switch from front wide to front ultra-wide, we need to effectively run as if it is not the same camera. That has further implications, as I explained, so we will get to it but it will take some time.

[nhan_8084]

Ok understood now, the front is probably id0, and another id subset that needs to be tuned separately vs a typical logical id like in the pixel for 0.7x and 1x iirc.  So my guess is that the UX would read something like the rear, 0.5x, 1x, and 1.5x once that ultrawide front is enabled?  No rush for that as priority but excited to learn it is coming.

[nhan_8084]

@BorisTheBlade Here is a couple of set shots in same area as I showed before when I had my 15 Pro Max.  All shots were done in auto normal mode as is, no settings changed, and stock are same.  No night mode used at all in stock or Indigo.  Lighting to me are quite bright due to the lightings all over so I wouldn't call this low lighting.

The 1x does very well, slight loss in brick details but the dng is fine with sharpening and denoising nuked vs default values in the dng using light room mobile. I will post comparison of the SOOC jpeg of Indigo vs stock as is, then crops of a detail brick area of a building of SOOC dng of Indigo vs nuked sharpening and all denoise vs SOOC jpeg Indigo.

The next set is of using periscope 4x, all shots auto from Indigo and stock, nothing else touched or modified.  Indigo's jpeg and dng are extremely denoised somehow to the point that brick details are completely lost.  Even the dng nuked denoising cannot recover it.  It's like some weird gaussian blur.  Stock has brick details, just with the obvious sharpening but the brick details show actual rectangular bricks vs literally nothing in Indigo!  Crops will show what I am referring to.

[nhan_8084]

@BorisTheBlade I had to split to two parts since it only allows 10 attachments.  Also I noticed that Indigo doesn't have wysiwyg?  The viewfinder is more true to life exposure while the output jpeg is much darker.  This happens especially during scenes at night, or if the light portion is not in frame.  I believed Oliver mentioned this as well.

[nhan_8084]

@BorisTheBlade This set is using 4x and 8x SR of Indigo vs stock, all auto, just point and shoot.  I took these images to show daytime lighting with grey clouds on a wet rainy day.

The 4x dng handled VERY WELL, the jpeg is a different story.  As you can see vs stock jpeg, Indigo's jpeg do not have the organic fine details of the pine tree as the stock jpeg, it is smeared into a bush like blob.  The dng as is imported in lightroom mobile is MUCH better than the Indigo jpeg, so maybe make that the default jpeg output because it is already in the dng as default render.  I will include crops to show point of interest.

-1251 png is crop of 4x SOOC Indigo jpeg

-1250 png is the crop of dng untouched as soon as it gets imported to lightroom mobile.  This is the one I said to make this rendering default to the SOOC Indigo Jpeg because it looks fine to me vs the 1251 rendering!

-1248 png is the crop of dng with all sharpening and noise reduction nuked, my preferred rendering if I was to apply it to become the SOCC Indigo jpeg.  It is much more organic looking, no loss of colors because color noise reduction is nuked.

The second set is of 8x SR, and it completely went left field!  There is no fine details of any sort, everything on the tree is plastic, oily, smears, as well as other surrounding plant branches and foliages.  The dng definitely do not help either from the jpeg, unlike the 4x counterpart.  I have tuned similar size sensor at 1/2.55" JN1 at f/2.6 and worse from android phones using google camera mod at same distance and scene lightings, and pine trees rendered much better at 10x to 30x range even.  From my time tuning gcam, I find that the main cause for improper rendering points to wrong noise model factor used for each lenses as they all require separate noise model values.  
-1247 png is the crop of the 8x dng as is imported to light room mobile, and as you can see it's plastic and smearing all over.

-1246 png is the crop of the 8x dng with sharpening and noise reduction nuked, no difference or no improvements I should say.

Oversaturation is still an issue as well.  I hope this explains everything I intend to show.  Please ask any questions as I am very very serious in analyzing and helping Indigo as I have my fair share of experiences with tuning on google camera.

[nhan_8084]

@BorisTheBlade This set is shot towards the sunset, blue hour, vs stock.  All was auto, pulled out phone and shoot.  I noticed the jpeg is rendered to be brighter than the dng saved to jpeg.  The only changes I did to the dng is nuking sharpness, lowered noise reduction and color noise reduction.  I will show crops of before and after.

-1282 is crop of sooc indigo jpeg

-1281 is crop if adjusted dng to jpeg, and you can see there are much more better fine details.

I just noticed the 8x in Indigo is reported as 100mm vs 8x stock reported as 200mm?  Can Indigo match the correct exif 8x to 8x?  This way people won't think they are shooting the 4x optical range when they shot in 8x.

[Oliver V.W]

Updated to 1.0.8 yesterday, and my phone was on 26.2 beta 3, and I wanted to report that most of the lowlight issues were fixed! It still sometimes chooses to shoot at 1/60 and ISO 8000 when on the 4x lens, but it does not look nearly as smudged as before (look at my previous post)

I've been shooting a few more photos with 1.0.8 on my iPhone 17 PM, and I know you guys are currently looking into the SR quality/detail issues, but I have found it's still hit-or-miss. I wanted to share a photo I like from afar, but it breaks apart into artifacts when you zoom in (IMG_3663). 

• Camera iPhone 17 PM 
• App Version: 1.0.8
• ISO: 8000, Shutter 1/60 s
• Complete auto, no tap-to-focus. 
• Focal length: 8x SR
• Both the subjects and I were extremely still. 

This next photo surprised me as well, as the artifacts/smoothening appeared when we were also very still and had lower iso values. (IMG_3596).

• Camera iPhone 17 PM 
• App Version: 1.0.8
• ISO: 160, Shutter 1/130 s 
• Complete auto, no tap-to-focus. 
• Focal length: 8x SR
• Both the subjects and I were extremely still. 

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nzNKx9uked76frArL8E9-57uAL3_p40M?usp=sharing

[nhan_8084]

Thanks for sharing these good lighting photos as I have also shared the same artifacts noticed in lower lighting as well but I am suprised it is in good lighting.  Hopefully the team knows what's causing it.  For google camera modded apk and tuning, these artifacts appeared across different devices due to wrong hdr model applied (processing of pixel devices) plus incorrect noise models used for the sensor of the device using the google camera modded apk.

[nhan_8084]

@BorisTheBlade I updated to 1.08 but I am not on the beta iOS 26 beta 3 so I might not see a difference versus 1.07.  However, the 4x is extremely under exposed!  I thought it was a fluke on one shot, but I took another shot of the same scene, with slight angle shift because I took it after viewing it.  All shots were done auto as always unless otherwise stated.  Stock exposure is correct on 4x and 8x, and Indigo at 8x is closer to stock at 8x than the 4x from Indigo to 4x stock.  The scene lighting is 6 recessed ceiling light 4" diameter soft white color 4000K.  

[lee_6381]

 Using the 10x setting I didn't have to get close to this scary guy. 

[nhan_8084]

@BorisTheBlade the team has been busy I see, and happy thanksgiving to all!  I updated to 1.09 for bugfixes but didn't see any improvements in most shots.  I have attached another sample of 8x vs stock 8x, all auto, decent indoor lighting.  I also attached the viewfinder screen record to show as well.  I actually like the viewfinder output, the speaker grills are very detailed and visible and not a weird blend of pastel look that the holes are barely distinguishable.

I also took another 8x toward a lower lighting area, and that's where things completely blew apart.  Stock didn't do good as well but much better as theres no weird artifacts!  Indigo shot at 1/59s iso 1600, stock is 1/30s iso 1600.  Indigo wb is very very blue vs stock which is correct wb and exposure as well.

[Gareth Renowden]

Over the last couple of nights, shooting sunsets with my 17 Pro (latest versions of everything), I've noticed banding on the 4x images from PI that isn't there on the Apple camera shots. Makes them more or less unusable. Samples attached. Any idea what's going on?

Forum software keeps rejecting the DNG file for some reason, so it can be downloaded here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/hpt64vrsw4ccieosmco97/IDG_20251129_204950_098.DNG?rlkey=8vv1o8pckiazd...

[nhan_8084]

@BorisTheBlade Got a chance to finally put night mode to use on my 17 pro max.  This is shot on 1.09 using main lens, night mode all auto.  I noticed the jpeg is also heavily underexposed in night mode as it is in normal mode, and viewfinder is brighter (closest to scene) than the jpeg.  I have attached the crops showing raw edit to proper exposure, sharpness nuke, and lowered noise reduction appropriately.  The crops shows how the scene was true to life vs the crushed blacks in jpeg.  

Overall, it is impressive just the underexpose issue needs to be touched up quite a bit.

[leed24280355]

Manual Noise Reduction. After seeing a recent comment here I noticed that for many of my Pi DNGs have a manual noise reduction value applied in LR and that I can reduce it to zero if desired. I had never noticed this before! It means that some of my shots that have smoothed details can be recovered somewhat - hoorah!

However, not all Pi DNGs have a positive luminance noise reduction applied. What determines whether this happens?

I am using a 14 Pro, latest version of Pi. Thanks

Lee

[nhan_8084]

lighting environment, and what the app thinks requires more or less denoising base on it detecting how many lux of lighting the sensor sees.  All that gets programmed in along with what's called luma levels, and "master" luma settings for denoise plus the amount of frames stacked.  The exif information you see also plays a factor, but those numbers I believed are the average of the merged stacked images vs a true one frame shutter speed and iso.

For raws, it's best to slide denoising to 0 in pure day light to sunset environment outdoors.  Also set sharpness to 0 as well because any sharpening will also amplifies the luma noises.

[karend8167956]

I was so excited to see the level and the grid in the app now! This really helps with trying to take landscape photos especially Sunrise photos. The yellow is a little hard to see when I'm trying to line up a sunrise and it's right in the middle, But otherwise, this is very helpful. 

[nhan_8084]

@BorisTheBlade These shots are low light using 8x vs stock, everything is auto, no night mode used on both apps.  You can see the artifacts very apparent in the Indigo jpeg, and exists in dng as well.  

In the Police car sample, the stock jpeg is bad but it is usable, where as in Indigo there are smears and artifacts everywhere.  I tried to take another 8x on a person, and everything just got ruined.  

In the building sample, the stock is very well maintained, you can see minimal noises, and brick details can be made out as rectangular shape.  In the Indigo, nothing is visible and smearing artifacts exists.

[nhan_8084]

@BorisTheBlade I wanted to do some more test regarding to the 8X SR (and potentially 2X SR) smearing issues.  I took the same scene just two different angles for the test.  Everything was shot as auto, it is raining quite heavily, shot through my windshield.  

The shot of the trees showed no artifacts because nothing was moving extensively (except rain droplets, which has no artifacts and that's great).  The road shot showed a car in frame, and you can def see artifacts where the outline of the car is and at other places.  This matches what I sent when Indigo first release it's app and I showed several 10X SR using my 15 Pro Max.  The crop of the car is also included.

However, as Oliver showed his samples, he said the subject and him was very still and artifacts of similar type also showed up.  

[nhan_8084]

I found a bug with manual exposure using the 1x lens, and I am quite sure it exists with all lenses, it seems to not be working at all as intended.  I have attached a screen record, sliding to -3 somehow produces a brighter picture than at +3ev!  It looks like the baked in stylistic look of Indigo is overwriting all user in put in pro (manual) which defeats that purpose.

Photo ending in 027 is -3ev, photo ending in 004 is +3ev, and photo ending in 929 is auto.  You can also see in the video the thumbnail corresponds to the photo I mentioned by looing at the brightness intensity.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/nrzp0q98pmd2kckcndd0t/Video-Dec-02-2025-2-30-17-PM.mov?rlkey=jxqubd7c...

[nhan_8084]

Today the skies were clear so I thought I attempted the moon again.  Shot using night mode, pro section, 6 frames, max zoom SR 20x, ss 1/3200s iso is 40.  The moon is perfectly centered in viewfinder but it kept going to the left corner as mentioned also before.  Hopefully a fix is in the work for this as it is very annoying to frame center in viewfinder at have the final output to the top left always.

Attached is the sooc jpeg and my dng post process.  There's several strange things I saw, especially the color edges that if you slide chroma denoise +100 in lightroom mobile doesn't really resolves it.  Btw screenshot doesn't properly take hdr so disregard the clipping.  

Another issue is the HDR base is extremely dark even with expo slide to max as shown in LRM, a problem that I have mentioned before.

Hopefully these are on the top of the todo fixes in the team.