For photography enthusiasts, the market for prosumer camera apps has never been more vibrant, with established favorites like Halide from Lux leading the charge. Now, Adobe has entered the scene with an exciting new offering: a free experimental app known as Project Indigo. This innovative app comes from the talented team that previously developed the original Google Pixel camera, renowned for its focus on computational photography.
Project Indigo aims to address the most common complaints about smartphone photography today. Users often find their photos to be overly bright, low in contrast, and saturated with colors. Adobe's goal with this app is to create an integrated mobile camera and editing experience that leverages the latest advances in computational photography and artificial intelligence. The team hopes to attract casual mobile photographers seeking a natural SLR-like appearance, as well as advanced users who desire manual control and superior image quality.
One of the standout features of Project Indigo is its unique approach to multi-frame image capture. The app can combine up to 32 underexposed frames into a single photograph, significantly reducing noise and preserving highlight details. While this feature may remind users of the HDR or Night mode in their iPhone's default camera, Project Indigo takes it a step further by providing enhanced control and more frames. The trade-off? Users may experience a slight delay after pressing the shutter, but the result is worth it—cleaner shadows, reduced noise, and an impressive dynamic range.
Project Indigo is designed for those who crave control, offering manual adjustments for focus, ISO, shutter speed, white balance (including temperature and tint), and exposure compensation. Additionally, the app allows users to manage the number of frames captured in a burst, providing complete control over capture time versus noise levels. For those looking to experiment with creative motion blur effects, Project Indigo includes a Long Exposure mode as well.
Another notable feature of Project Indigo is its approach to digital zoom quality. Through multi-frame super-resolution, the app captures multiple slightly offset frames when zooming past 2x (or 10x on the iPhone 16 Pro Max's telephoto lens) and combines them to create a sharper final image. This technique avoids the common pitfalls of AI-processed super-resolution tools that sometimes generate artificial details, resulting in a more authentic and high-quality image.
As an Adobe project, it’s no surprise that Project Indigo offers deep integration with Lightroom Mobile. After taking photos, users can easily send images directly to Lightroom for editing, whether they are working with JPEGs or DNG files. Adobe has built in profile and metadata support, enabling Lightroom to differentiate between Project Indigo's SDR and HDR "looks," simplifying the editing process.
Project Indigo also serves as a testing ground for new features that may eventually be integrated into Adobe's broader ecosystem. A notable example is the AI-powered Remove Reflections mode, which enhances photos taken through glass or windows. This app is compatible with all iPhone Pro and Pro Max models from the iPhone 12 onward and all non-Pro iPhones starting from the iPhone 14.
The app is free to download and does not require an Adobe account, making it accessible to all users. However, due to the CPU-intensive nature of its image processing, Adobe recommends using Project Indigo on newer iPhone models for the best experience. Interested users can explore the app further by visiting the Project Indigo website, where they can view numerous lossless sample photos, or download it directly from the App Store to try it for themselves.
