For those passionate about photography, the market for prosumer camera applications has been filled with excellent choices, with long-standing favorites like Halide from Lux standing out. Now, Adobe is making its mark with a free experimental app developed by the original team from the Google Pixel camera.
If you recall the early stages of the Google Pixel and its strong emphasis on computational photography, you are already familiar with the expertise and priorities of this team, now part of Adobe. Their new application, Project Indigo, brings that same innovative spirit to the iPhone, albeit with several notable differences.
Reduced “smartphone aesthetic”
Essentially, Project Indigo represents Adobe’s response to the main criticisms surrounding contemporary smartphone photography: “overly bright, low contrast, high color saturation, significant smoothing, and excessive sharpening.”
Here’s how the Project Indigo team describes the app:
This marks the beginning of Adobe’s journey towards an integrated mobile camera and editing experience that leverages the latest developments in computational photography and AI. Our objective is for Indigo to attract casual mobile photographers seeking a natural SLR-like appearance for their photos, especially when viewed on larger displays; advanced photographers wanting manual control and optimal image quality; and anyone—whether casual or serious—who enjoys experimenting with new photographic tools.
Focus on computational photography
Project Indigo employs a fascinating multi-frame image capturing technique, merging up to 32 underexposed shots into one to minimize noise and retain highlight details. This process resembles the HDR or Night mode functionality of your iPhone’s native camera but goes further by offering greater control and utilizing more frames.
The trade-off? You may experience a slight delay after pressing the shutter, but the results include cleaner shadows, reduced noise, and a wider dynamic range.
Additionally, Project Indigo applies this multi-frame computational stack even when saving RAW/DNG files, not just JPEGs—a feature lacking in most smartphone camera applications.
Comprehensive manual controls and more
As expected from an advanced camera application, Project Indigo provides manual adjustments for focus, ISO, shutter speed, white balance (including temperature and tint), and exposure compensation.
Furthermore, it “allows control over the frame count in the burst mode,” enabling photographers to manage capture duration against noise reduction. The app even includes a “Long Exposure” setting, ideal for creative motion blur effects.
Digital zoom without artificial detail
Project Indigo enhances digital zoom quality through multi-frame super-resolution. When zooming beyond 2× (or 10× with the telephoto lens on the iPhone 16 Pro Max), the app captures several slightly offset frames (utilizing your natural hand tremor) to produce a sharper finished image.
Unlike AI-enhanced super-resolution tools that occasionally create fictional details, this method relies on real-world micro-shifts to reconstruct resolution, leading to superior results.
Designed for Lightroom integration
As an Adobe initiative, it’s no surprise that Project Indigo is closely integrated with Lightroom Mobile. After taking photos, you can directly send images to Lightroom for editing, whether in JPEG or DNG format.
Moreover, Adobe has added profile and metadata support to differentiate between SDR and HDR “looks” from Project Indigo, facilitating easy toggling during editing in Lightroom.
Baked-in experimental features
Being part of Adobe Labs means Project Indigo also serves as a testing ground for features that might later appear across Adobe’s platform. One intriguing early feature is the AI-powered “Remove Reflections” mode, designed to clean up photos taken through glass or windows.
Project Indigo is compatible with all iPhone Pro and Pro Max models starting from the iPhone 12, along with all non-Pro iPhones starting from the iPhone 14. The app is free, requires no Adobe account, and is available now on the App Store. However, due to the CPU-intensive nature of its image processing, Adobe recommends using it on a newer iPhone for optimal performance.
Be sure to check out the Project Indigo website and explore the numerous lossless sample photos available for review. You can also download the app from the App Store if you want to give it a try yourself.
Via Tecnoblog
